Tabak Baths

The Tabak Baths (Tanner's Baths) are a historic Ottoman hammam in Şahinbey District of Gaziantep Province in southeastern Turkey, in the metropolitan area of a city renowned for its extraordinary pistachio nuts, its baklava, and its position as the culinary capital of the Turkish southeast. Gaziantep — ancient Antiochia ad Taurum — preserves one of the richest collections of Ottoman hammams in Turkey, and its tanner quarter baths served the leather-working craftsmen who processed the hides of the region's sheep and cattle in a city where craft guilds maintained distinct neighbourhood identities with their own mosques, fountains, and hammams. The Tabak Baths reflect the deep integration of the hammam into the artisanal economy of Ottoman Gaziantep, where the weekly bath was as much a professional necessity for tanners working with animal hides as a religious and social obligation.