الميثاق
The common charter of two craft houses
The Riad Al-Uns in Fez and Al-Funduq as-Siqilli, in the province of Ragusa, are two residential houses of the crafts founded on the same rules, the niẓām ad-dār, which members sign on entering and which govern the work, the common life, the apprenticeship and the internal arbitration. They use the same series of signs, and whoever has lived in one recognises the other. What changes is the scale: a courtyard house within the medina, a masseria of twenty-three hectares within a landscape.
The house in Fez
رياض الأنس
The house in Sicily
الفندق الصقلي
The house beside the house
المُنية
Al-Munya is the guesthouse: beside each house, in a separate body, with its own entrance. Inside, two declensions. Dar al-Bidaya (“house of the beginning”) keeps the unpaid hospitality of the Riad; Dar al-Diyafa (دار الضيوف, “house of the guests”) keeps the paying hospitality of the Nudama. The company of the Munya pays the Riad an annual fee, regardless of profits. An-Nudama is the majlis of the ninety-nine founders, with its own treasury funding the Riad; it has no voice in the deliberations. This structure is the same in Fez (Riad Al-Uns) and in Sicily (Al-Funduq as-Siqilli).
Two houses, one rule
At the Riad the patio: lime walls, no window on the street, the basins with water in movement and the masonry mass that holds the cool. At the Funduq the courtyard of the masseria in pale stone, the entrance passage and the twenty-three hectares of olive, almond and arable land. The same rule of water and mass, at two different scales.
At the Riad the crafts of the hand of Fez, with masters who work in the house where they live. At the Funduq a single workshop at the opening, fine saddlery, whose work leaves on commission; calligraphy and the book come second. In both, the disciplines of the body with qualified instructors, without weapons and without grades, and the same undyed linen for everyone, masters included.
The same rules, with the council, the majlis al-umanāʾ, and the arbitral panel, the hayʾat at-taḥkīm. At the Funduq they hold four bodies apart, the House, the farming, the guesthouse and the supporters, so that none may dispose of the others and the walls remain bound to their purpose.