70 NERMINA MUJEZINOVIĆ National Committee ICOMOS in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Šišman-Ibrahimpasha’s hammam in Počitelj: researching, condition analysis and revitalization project
BASIC HISTORICAL DATA1 The oldest material remains of a bath – as it is known today, were excavated in Cnossos on the island of Crete at the beginning of the 20th century. The bath was dicovered with traces of water supply system and toilets, besides the Queen’s room, within the vast palace. Bathing, wheather in nature or in baths, was a part of Hellenic, and later, Roman tradition; in Athens, public baths were built as an addition to a training field or wrestling ground (palaestra), while ancient Rome erected training fields next to thermae. Arabic, Turkish and Persian baths function on a similar principle like the antiquity ones, while names of individual rooms and sites are different in different traditions. Hammams were built, both as house baths and as public baths, often as representative structures, in large numbers on the entire territory of the Ottoman Empire, that is, everywhere where Islam spread. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, they have a character of important public buildings, and often an architectural value. Although they served for a financial support of some educational or religious institution, their character is 1 Basic historical data, according to: Kreševljaković, Hamdija: Izabrana djela / Banje, vodovodi, hanovi i karavansaraji, Veselin Masleša, Sarajevo, 1991.