How one enters
One is admitted by name, on one’s own application, and never on account of origin, descent, faith or membership of a category. Any application may be refused with reasons given. Admission is mixed in faith and culture, and secular: young men of Islamic and Arab culture and young men of Western and Christian culture may live in the same house.
The path
1. Individual application. Submitted by the person concerned. The governing body decides within thirty days and communicates the outcome in writing.
2. Paid trial. Two to four weeks on the building site or in the workshop. It is paid because it is work, and it serves both sides to find out whether the thing holds.
3. Apprenticeship. Fixed-term contract, with written start and end dates. At the end the path is completed or continues.
4. Vote. After six months of apprenticeship, the majlis decides on admission to membership with full voting rights. There is a vote, and the vote may be negative: nobody acquires membership by the mere passage of time. A refusal is reasoned in writing and does not terminate the apprenticeship contract in progress. From that moment the others call him rafīq, companion, which is the everyday name of the house.
Who may apply
Only adults. No minor is admitted to common life, to lodging, to work shifts or to the building site. Educational activities addressed to the young people of the area take place during the day, without overnight stays, in spaces distinct from those of common life, and normally at schools or training institutions of the territory. The residential community and the education of minors are two distinct trades, with distinct obligations.
The house is intended for young men of age. What is transmitted here — the manual craft in the form in which it has been taught for centuries, futuwwa as the code of the workshop, furūsiyya as the discipline of the body — has come down to us within male company and carries its manners: the hierarchy of the workshop, correction before the others, the trial of the horse. A cohort of young men living and working together has dynamics of its own, which the education practised here presupposes; a mixed community would be another thing, with other manners and other results.
To this the place is added. The sister house is in Fez, within a medina and within a custom where a mixed residence is not practicable, and the two houses hold the same rule. The limit holds for the life of the house in all its forms: residence, workshop and teaching, masters and instructors included. Whoever commissions the work, buys it or visits the house does not fall within it.
What one accepts by signing
On admission each signs the statutes and the rules, which lay down the hours and the discipline of work, the conduct expected in the common spaces, the terms of the apprenticeship, the ownership of the tools and of what is produced, the grounds and procedure for exclusion, and the arbitration clause.
One also accepts four things in one’s own favour, which no future assembly can take away without everyone’s consent: admission by application, the absence of a residence requirement, free withdrawal, and reciprocity.
How one leaves
The rafīq withdraws at any time by written notice, without penalty or payment, keeping his own tools and whatever he has accrued. He owes no explanation, loses nothing beyond membership, and is bound to no notice period beyond what his employment contract, if any, provides.
Exclusion
Exclusion is resolved by the assembly for serious breaches, after written notice of the charges and the granting of a period of not less than fifteen days for the defence; the member concerned does not take part in the vote. An appeal against exclusion lies to the arbitral panel within thirty days.
The words of this page are in the common glossary; the works cited in the sources; the sister house is Riyāḍ al-Uns.