Pipes with removable bowl Bowls are made of varying shapes and materials to allow the smoker to try different characteristics or to dedicate particular bowls for particular tobaccos. Bowls are not interchangeable between manufacturers. Hookahs A hookah, ghelyan, or narghile, is a Middle Eastern water pipe that cools the smoke by filtering it through a water chamber. Often ice, cough-drops, milk, or fruit juice is added to the water. Traditionally, the tobacco is mixed with a sweetener, such as honey or molasses. Fruit flavors have also become popular. Modern hookah smokers, especially in the US, smoke "me'assel", "moassel", "molasses" or "shisha", all names for the same wet mixture of tobacco, molasses/honey, glycerine, and often, flavoring. This style of tobacco is smoked in a bowl with foil or a screen (metal or glass) on top of the bowl. More traditional tobaccos are "tombiek" (a dry unflavored tobacco, which the user moistens in water, squeezes out the extra liquid, and places coals directly on top) or "jarak" (more of a paste of tobacco with fruit to flavor the smoke). Bowl materials North American natives along the East coast traditionally made their tobacco pipes from clay or from a type of pot-stone (lapis ollaris), or else serpentine stone. In the Upper Midwest they made use of the red pipestone or catlinite for the same, a fine-grained easily worked stone of a rich red color of the Coteau des Prairies. Today, other construction materials used for the bowl may include any of the following: Briar – root of Erica arborea, prevalent material. Meerschaum – mineral sepiolite called "sea foam". Gourd Porcelain Synthetics Ebony ("Zappi") Cherry wood Beechwood Corn cob Metal – used by Japanese kiseru and Arabian midwakh. Briar The majority of pipes sold today, whether handmade or machine-made, are fashioned from briar. Briar is a particularly well suited wood for pipe making for a number of reasons. The first and most important characteristic is its natural resistance to fire. The second is its inherent ability to absorb moisture. The burl absorbs water in nature to supply the tree in the dry times and likewise will absorb the moisture that is a byproduct of combustion. Briar is cut from the root burl of the tree heath (Erica arborea), which is native to the rocky and sandy soils of the Mediterranean region. Briar burls are cut into two types of blocks; ebauchon and plateaux. Ebauchon