What Is a Hookah?

"A hookah is a single or multi-stemmed, often glass-based, water pipe device for smoking; originating in Iran, it gained fame in the Arab World when it traveled from Persia to Arabia. A hookah operates by water-filtration and indirect heat. It can be used for smoking many substances, such as herbal fruits and tobacco.

Depending on locality, hookahs are known as other names, such as a shisha/sheesha, water pipe, nargeela/nargile/narghile/nargileh/narguil????©, argeela/arghileh/arguil????©, okka, kalyan, gewat suckre, or ghelyoon/ghalyan. Many of these names are of Arab, Indian, Turkish, Uzbek, or Persian origin.

Narghile is from the Persian word nārgil or "coconut", and in Sanskrit nārikela and it was made out of coconut shells.  Shisha is from the Persian word shishe, literally translated as glass and not bottle, and is primarily used for water pipes in Egypt and the Arab countries of the Gulf (such as Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia).

Hashish is an Arabic word for grass, which may have been another way of saying cannabis resin. Another source states, "In early Arabic texts, the term hashish referred not only to cannabis resin but also to the dried leaves or flower heads and sweetmeats made with them". 

Hookah itself may stem from Arabic uqqa, meaning small box, pot, or jar. Both names refer to the original methods of constructing the smoke/water chamber part of the hookah. Arghile or Narghile is the name most commonly used in Armenia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Israel, Bulgaria and Romania, though the initial "n" is often dropped in Arabic. 

Shisha is more commonly seen in Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. In Iran it is called ghalyoun or ghalyan and in India and Pakistan it is referred to as huqqa.  The archaic form of this latter Indian name, hookah is most commonly used in English for historical reasons, as it was in India that large numbers of English-speakers first sampled the effects of the water pipe." - Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah