The guesthouse
Al-Munya is the guesthouse, a distinct body, with its own entrance and the same crest in the two seats. It is a distinct subject, with a patrimony of its own. Inside, two houses: Dar al-Asl, which lodges without charge the guests of the House (costs on the company); and Dar al-Diyafa, which lodges the nudamāʾ and their guests, who pay their share (proceeds to the company). The company pays the house of formation a fixed annual fee, whatever the profits. An-Nudama, the ninety-nine founders, is not a house and has no lodging of its own: when its members stay, they are paying guests of Dar al-Diyafa.
The guesthouse
المُنية
Fez · Sicily
The two seats
Fez
Beside the Riad Al-Uns
The house Al-Munya, wall to wall with the house of formation. Inside, two houses: Dar al-Asl and Dar al-Diyafa.
Sicily
Beside Al-Funduq
The same structure of the Munya, the same names. Beside it, Al-Funduq: a threshold mixed in faith and culture, and secular; a kindred house to the Riad, not its branch. The setting changes; the frame of the Munya does not.
Al-Munya is the house; An-Nudama, the company of its founders. The apartment of honour of Dar al-Diyafa enters no tariff.
The guests of the House
Dar al-Asl
It lodges without charge those whom the house receives. The costs fall on Al-Munya.
Hospitality
Dar al-Diyafa
The house of hospitality, where the nudamāʾ and their guests stay at their own charge. The proceeds remain with Al-Munya. The apartment of honour enters no tariff.
The house
Al-Munya
The body beside the house, with its own entrance and the same crest. Inside, two houses: Dar al-Asl and Dar al-Diyafa. The same structure in Fez and in Sicily; the two craft houses, by contrast, are kindred, with distinct thresholds.
The founders
An-Nudama
The ninety-nine founders. A distinct body, with a treasury of its own, which funds the house of formation. It is not a house: when its members stay, they are paying guests of Dar al-Diyafa. It has no voice in the deliberations.
The name is not an ornament. In al-Andalus and in the Maghreb the munya was a villa of retreat: garden, water, shade, chosen company. A house away from the noise, and yet wholly a house.
“To site a house among gardens, let a rise be chosen that makes it easier to keep. Let the building face south, at the entrance to the estate, and let the well and the basin be placed at the highest point; better than the well, a channel running in the shade. Let the dwelling have two doors, so that it may be better sheltered and the rest of those who live there quieter. Near the basin let evergreen shrubs be planted, to gladden the eye. Further off, beds of flowers and trees whose leaves do not fall. Let the estate be girdled with vines, and let pergolas be planted over the paths that cross it. Let the garden be closed by one of these paths, so that it stays distinct from the rest of the land. Among the fruit trees, besides the vine, let there be nettle trees and trees of that kind, because their wood is useful.”
Ibn Luyūn, Kitāb al-Filāḥa, Almería, 1348 (after the Spanish version of J. Eguaras Ibáñez (1975), revised by W. Akef and I. Almela (2021)).
Sicily knew its highest form. Around Palermo the Kalbid emirs, and then the Norman kings, wanted suburban residences girded with orchards, groves, channels and pavilions: the Favara of Maredolce, which takes its name from the fawwāra, the gushing spring; the Zisa; the Cuba; and the great park of the Genoardo, from jannat al-arḍ, the paradise on earth.
Al-Munya is a private house, wall to wall with the house of formation, in Fez as in Sicily.
People come for retreat, for quiet work, for measured company. It receives few guests at a time, and receives them by degrees. It is not a hotel.
An-Nudama, its founders, form a closed company, entered by co-optation alone.
The two houses have entirely separate entrances, kitchens, staff and circulations. A single door in the common wall, which opens only from the side of the house of formation.
Living in beauty, when it is not staged, already educates the eye and the body. The quality of the light, the weight of a cloth, the proportion of a patio, an old object that was not produced for you and that cannot be taken away: all this precedes discourse.
The spaces
The house
Few spaces, generous, ordered. Each answers to a precise use. Nothing is thought for accumulation or for display.
One does not enter a munya as one enters a hall. One is received, by degrees.
Threshold
Sqifa Entrance vestibule. He who crosses the door does not yet see. The intimacy of the house is guarded before it is offered.
Parlour First reception, distinct from any space of the Riad. Here one sits before being admitted further.
Heart
Patio with porticoes and hall The centre, and the motif of the name. Porticoed patio and great hall that opens directly onto it. A place of presence and of shared silence.
Garden Water, shade, scents. Not a décor: the continuity of the patio toward the sky.
Oratory Oriented space of prayer, looking onto the patio and the garden.
Permanence
Guest apartments Private rooms with their own bathroom. Contained number.
Apartment of honour Unit of higher rank and of greater generosity of space — the rank of the room, not of who occupies it.
Salon A closed room for conversation, onto the patio.
Service
Dining room With a complete autonomous kitchen, entirely separate from that of the Riad.
Service quarters Accessible only to the staff of the Munya.
Discreet store For valuable textiles, pieces in deposit and objects that must not remain on display.
Threshold
The rule
The number is closed. Access is by co-optation alone. What is said here remains here.
The rule precedes the guest. It is not negotiated upon arrival. One does not relax it to accommodate.
The guest is received. He acquires no right over the life of the neighbouring house. Crossing the common door, if it happens, remains a gesture of those who live there — never a prerogative of the guest.
Beside, in the Riad, it is the men of the house who look. The ṣāniʿ, the nāʾib, the maʿallem, the muqaddam, the shaykh: each, at his degree, holds the measure. They do not judge according to wealth. They judge the man.
At their table, during an archery trial, on a ride in the desert, no one wears his origin on his face. One does not know whether the one sitting beside him is a young man received by hospitality or the son of a house that could buy the medina. The rule is the same. The gaze is the same.
One does not enter by what one has. One is looked at for what one is.
Work
The furnishings
The Munya is not furnished once and for all by a decorator. It is clothed, over time, by the work of the neighbouring house.
The motifs that will return on the walls and the textiles have nothing of an importation. They belong to a repertoire that has already made the journey — from the Islamic Mediterranean toward Venice — and that returns. Few pieces. Few colours. Matte surfaces. Nothing that has not already accomplished the going.
To support this house is to commission a gesture. In the same city, by the same hand. A hanging, a light, a piece of woodwork.
The workshops of Dar al-Hiraf and the corporations of Fez will progressively supply textiles, stuccoes, ceramics, wood, metal and light. The craft thus has a commissioner before it has a market.
Before the eyes remain also, if any are found, a few old objects that were not produced for the guest and that he cannot acquire. They are neither collection nor museum. They are a model — and a warning.
The door does not open by itself. When it opens, it is a man who enters, under the same measure as the others, his rank left outside. The work of the workshops, by contrast, passes every day: it clothes the house.
Correspondence
Every request is examined with discretion. No answer is due.
The words of this page are in the common glossary; the works cited in the sources; the houses of the charter are Riyāḍ al-Uns and Al-Funduq aṣ-Ṣiqillī.