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A peshtemal (also spelled peshtamal, pestamal, pestmal, or pestema ; from Persian^[1]~ Fa puştmāl پشت‌مال back towel § Fa puşt پشت back + Fa māl مال cleaning) is a traditional towel used in baths. A staple of Persian , Persian peshtemal had a strong influence on Ottoman culture, dating back hundreds of years, the pestemal was originally designed to help individual bathers maintain their privacy. In addition to being highly absorbent, pestemals dry faster than thicker towels.

Traditionally, Persian has a red color with simple designs or shapes with black or white lines, but other colors and patterns are also common.

It is also used to indicate which region people are from. There are many kinds of peshtemal, with different styles and colors in different areas of Turkey and Iran.

The peshtemal absorbs water as fast as a terrycloth towel, dries more quickly, takes up less space, is easy to carry and is therefore used as an alternative in bathrooms, pools, spas, beaches, sports facilities, and for baby care.^{[citation needed]}

The peshtemal fabric is made of 100% cotton produced on manually operated looms in modern Turkey, historically in Antioch.

• Fouta towel

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Turkish. (February 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Turkish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Turkish Wikipedia article at [[:tr:Peştamal]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|tr|Peştamal}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.