The Turkish bath, is the Middle Eastern variant of a steam bath, which can be categorized as a wet relative of the sauna. The Turkish baths have played an important role in cultures of the Middle-East, serving as places of social gathering, ritual cleansing, and as architectural structures, institutions, and (later) elements with special customs attached to them. Europeans learned about the Hamam via contacts with the Ottomans, hence the "Turkish" part of the name.