The questions
What is most often asked of the houses, with the answers that can be given in the present state of things. They are brief on purpose: what is not set out here — the terms of a stay, the full text of the rule, the measure of a commitment — is communicated after a first exchange. For everything else, write to us.
The house and its spirit
Is Riad Al-Uns a hotel?
No. It is a traditional dwelling and an intentional community of human scale: young men who live there, pray, work at a craft and share the table. Hospitality exists, but it is rare and subordinate to the rhythm of the house — never the reverse.
Does the house already exist?
Not yet. Riad Al-Uns is a project: a precise vision, a place still to be found, a community that has not begun. These pages describe what the house intends to be, not what it already is. No bookings or enrolments are open yet. Expressions of interest in the future paths, and offers of support, may be sent now, with a view to the opening.
Who carries the project today?
The concept is Pietro Siffi’s. Until the house opens, the file is followed by the association Il Fondaco Siciliano — Associazione per le arti e i mestieri, in Catania. The direction of the house, once it is open, is another charge — see At-Tadbir.
What does “Al-Uns” mean?
الأنس — al-uns means, in Arabic, intimacy, cordial familiarity, the companionship that drives out solitude (waḥsha). Joined to riyāḍ, the garden closed to the outside and open to the sky, the name describes what the house intends to be: the garden of intimacy, the place where one learns to be with others without scattering oneself.
What is Dar al-Hiraf?
The “house of crafts”: the formative heart of the Riad. There, beside a master and over time, one learns a craft of the hand — saddlery, which gathers leather, wood and metals, and then calligraphy and the book, zellige, plaster and mocárabe, weaving, essences — as well as the disciplines of the body and of chant. The formation does not aim at technique alone: it forms character, according to the ideal of futuwwa.
Why a house reserved for men?
Because the residency is a complete common life — shared rooms, workshops, hammam, prayer — and because the tradition it comes from conceives it so. The house forms young unmarried men, many of whom will later found a household: the separation is not mistrust, it is the frame that makes this formation possible. Visits from mothers, sisters and relatives take place in a dedicated parlour, reached from the main entrance.
Is this a closed brotherhood?
No. There is no secret oath, no hidden doctrine, no obligation to stay. The rule is written, handed over and signed on admission; the chain of responsibility is public; adherence is voluntary and anyone may leave the house freely. What is asked is explicit from the threshold — which is precisely why the rule is written down.
Who may come, and how
Who are you looking for?
Young men who have come to a considered decision: to learn a craft practised over time, a discipline of the body, a word given that binds. Three orientations meet on the same path — the craft, spiritual and moral formation, physical discipline. None excludes the others.
What are the age conditions?
All three paths are reserved for adults, from the age of eighteen. The residential path is intended for unmarried men and, in principle, up to forty.
Must one be unmarried?
Yes, for the residency. The common life is complete — the house cannot at the same time be a conjugal home. The time of formation is a time that prepares, for many, the founding of a family; it does not overlap with it.
Must one already know a craft?
No. Selection bears on the candidate’s disposition, not on any prior technical level: the gesture can be learned, the intention is judged from the threshold. Some already know what they wish to learn, others are still searching — both are admissible.
How does admission proceed?
One reads first. One writes next. One does not force the door. After a first exchange it becomes clear which independent path one wishes to know. It is a matter of expressing a serious and considered interest, before any enrolment.
Can an application be refused?
Yes. Agreement is never automatic, and the house reserves the right not to give detailed reasons for a refusal — not out of arrogance, but to protect what constitutes it. The priority remains the continuity of the crafts and the formation of men who can last, not the filling of places.
Can one enter without means?
Yes. Young men who are poor or in precarious circumstances are received on no condition other than their compatibility with futuwwa and furūsiyya. One is judged not on what one can buy, but on what one is, in act and in potency. They may stay for a time, or for the long term, according to their ability to take their place and their will to learn a craft.
Does the guest of Al-Munya enter by the same path?
No. Al-Munya is the house beside the house, with its own door. Dār al-Aṣl receives, without payment, those whom the House invites; Dār al-Diyāfa receives, for a price, the nudamāʾ and the guests they present. One does not enter it by form.
What professional skills are you looking for?
One maalem per discipline, committed over time. For the crafts of the hand: saddler (sarrāj), coppersmith and blacksmith (ṣaffār), joiner and wood carver (najjār), bookbinder and calligrapher (mujallid) of the khatt maghribī, weaver (nassāj), potter and zellige craftsman (fakhkhār), master of plaster and mocárabe (jabbāṣ); for the laboratories, perfumer and herbalist (ʿaṭṭār). For body, word and sound: Andalusian music (al-âla), Egyptian taḥṭīb, shaykh al-malḥūn, gnawa maâlem, muṣāraʿa, archery, horsemanship, traditional fencing, zūrkhāne.
These posts are addressed to salaried masters rather than residents: they come to transmit their art without entering the circle of the residency. Each has his own equipped workshop and ṣāniʿ ready to receive what he has to pass on. When a workshop in the medina has closed for want of a successor, the house can give its tools and its knowledge a second life.
On what criteria is a master chosen?
Technical competence, uprightness and a verified reputation. The house favours young masters, for whom the charge is a source of autonomy and professional pride, with no rigid age ceiling: competence and uprightness take precedence over seniority alone. The mission goes beyond technical teaching — to transmit a gesture is to transmit a way of being within the craft.
What staff does the house need?
The ordinary tasks — keeping one’s room, the washing-up, serving at table, watching over certain common spaces — fall to the residents themselves. The rest calls for a regular salaried presence:
Some of these roles may be combined or may evolve according to the skills of the person recruited.
Do certain charges require living in the house?
Three of them do — they are not exercised at fixed hours. The resident faqīh gives the lessons of doctrine (Qur’an, fiqh, ʿaqīda) and keeps the timetable of the five prayers; the house seeks him young, trained in Mālikī fiqh and Ashʿarī ʿaqīda, at ease with the Moroccan musical and confraternal tradition. The physical training instructor leads the daily training of the body and lives at the rhythm of the house: useful strength, the kind that carries a man through a day in the workshop and through a whole life, never the silhouette. The keeping of the threshold, the bawwāb, cannot be applied for: that charge falls to a resident, chosen among those most advanced in the disciplines of the body.
Who watches over him?
No one, and that is deliberate. The house does not work by surveillance, since its spaces are common and visible, no meeting between a man who exercises a responsibility and the man in his charge is held one to one in an isolated place, and everyone there answers for someone and before someone. What protects a young man here is the arrangement of the rooms and the brotherhood of those who occupy them. A father looking for a boarding school that keeps watch will not find it here; a father looking for a place where his son will have nothing to hide, yes.
And if he wants to leave?
He leaves. Adherence is voluntary, no one is held against his will, and a resident may leave the community freely and at any moment, with no debt and with nothing claimed from him. The house prefers a man who goes after three months to a man who stays without having chosen it.
Does he pay, or is he paid?
Neither, in the ordinary sense. No one who lives here is paid, and no one who is paid lives here. The resident receives lodging, the table and everything he needs, with nothing withheld from him and nothing counted against him, and a savings account accumulates in his name throughout his years of residence. Families who can afford it contribute to the house; those who cannot are distinguished in nothing, and no sign in the dress, the room or the place at table says who has contributed.
Who decides that he is ready?
The maalem, and no one else. Progress in the craft depends neither on seniority nor on a third party’s request, and no sum and no name advance a man by a single degree. The work presented may be refused, and it is possible not to finish; it is that possible refusal that gives the reception its weight.
Daily life
What does a day look like?
The five canonical prayers give it its frame — from the silent Fajr to the recollected Ishā. Between them: the workshop in the morning, physical formation or chant in the afternoon, meals shared at the common table, study, and the silence of the night after Ishā.
Is there a written rule?
Yes. On admission each resident receives the rule of community life — daily rhythm, mutual respect, life in the room, tutoring, dress, use of devices, substances and health, visits and outings, procedure in case of breach — and signs it before settling in. It is a document for internal use: it is not published online. Detailed terms are given after a serious first exchange, not by public form.
May one keep one’s phone?
Yes. Residents have free use of their phones, computers and tablets; there is no filtering, no inspection of personal effects, no monitoring of devices. The rule rests on formation and on each man’s responsibility, not on surveillance — the only limit is not to disturb the common life or the times of prayer.
How does one dress?
Traditional dress is the rule of daily life for residents: the serwal replaces jeans, the gandoura or djellaba replaces the t-shirt. It is a way of learning measure through the body, and not a costume. Guests are offered traditional dress without obligation, within the bounds of decency.
Alcohol, tobacco, substances?
Alcohol is not part of the house, and narcotics have no place in it. Tobacco and shisha, on the other hand, belong to ordinary life: men smoke where they gather — the winter salons, the reading rooms, the patio, the galleries, the gardens — and it is a way of making a conversation last, not a tolerance granted. During Ramadan, no consumption in public before sunset.
May one go into town, or see one’s family?
Yes. Residents go out freely and keep their friendships and family ties; periods of return to the family are provided for at the main feasts and during holidays. Only a systematic withdrawal from the common life gives rise to a conversation with the educators — to verify that the commitment remains a choice lived, not endured.
Is the commitment permanent?
No, and it could not be. Adherence is voluntary, no one is held against his will, and any resident may leave the community freely. The residency is a time of formation that prepares what follows — a craft practised, a house, a family — not a permanent state.
Who decides, and who answers for what?
A named and visible chain of responsibility: the ṣāniʿ and the three tones of his belt, the nāʾib delegate of the guild, the maalem master of the craft, the two muqaddam counsellors, and the Ash-Shaykh who answers for the house. Exchanges of formation, counsel or correction always take place in common and visible spaces, never in isolation.
Stay, craft immersion, residency
What are the three ways of approaching?
The stay: a limited time within the rhythm of the house, without commitment. The craft immersion: a few weeks beside a master, in a single craft chosen in advance. The residency: the long commitment — the craft, the body, the faith, the common life.
Stay · Craft immersion → · Residency
Can a stay be booked as at a guest house?
No. There is no online booking and no open calendar: each request is examined one by one, by correspondence and conversation, and bears as much on the disposition of the guest as on the places available. Places are deliberately very few — the house receives first those who live and are formed there.
What is expected of a guest?
That he enter into the rhythm rather than turn it into scenery: the common table, respect for the hours of prayer, sobriety of dress, the silence of the night after Ishā. The guest may be present at the work of the workshops and, at times, take part in it. Far from buying an experience, he is received, for a time, into a house that is already living.
May one visit the house without staying?
The Riad is not a museum and is not open to visits. Certain evenings — samāʿ, conversation, music — bring together the house and those it receives; one is invited to them, one does not sign up.
How long is a craft immersion, and which craft does it concern?
From two to six weeks, in a single craft chosen in advance with the house — the hand in the material, not observation from the threshold. It is a complete path in itself; it may precede a residential application, without being a condition of it and without guaranteeing admission.
What are the material conditions?
The house does not yet publish a price list: the future terms of a short stay, a craft immersion or the residential path will be set out case by case, after a first exchange. They are the consequence of the relation and not its starting point.
What remains after the residency?
Not the title of an alumnus, and not a network. What remains is a malaka — a craft held, a word, a household to keep, sometimes a work left in the walls. One does not carry the Riad away; one carries away what the gesture and the rhythm have laid down in oneself.
Can one take away what one has made?
What leaves the workshops for sale or on commission follows the ordinary rules of the house. But the work of reception — the one each resident leaves at the end of his training — is never taken away, for it is built into the building, entered in the register, and neither sold nor moved.
What happens if the work is not received?
The master may refuse it. One then begins again, and it is possible not to finish. That possible refusal adds no severity, but gives the reception its weight, for a trial one is certain to pass is not a trial. The time needed is granted; the house does not award a title for seniority.
Faith, language and support
Must one be Muslim to enter the residency?
The residency presupposes sharing the prayer life of the house: the five canonical prayers order the day, and the lessons of doctrine — Qur’an, fiqh, ʿaqīda — are part of the formation. It is not a frame that can be followed from outside. A stay, by contrast, belongs to hospitality: what is asked of a guest is respect for the rhythm, not adherence.
Where is the house, and in which languages does one write?
In Morocco, in a traditional dwelling still to be found. Correspondence may be in French, English or Arabic — these pages exist in the first three languages. The daily life of the house will be conducted in Arabic and French; a candidate who does not yet speak them should simply say so in his letter.
How can one support the project?
Three commitments, according to each man’s measure: the acquisition of the place, its restoration, and the endowment fund — the last being the most decisive, since it guarantees that the house will not depend on next year’s generosity. One may also carry a single element: a maalem’s year, the setting up of a workshop, the formation of a ṣāniʿ, a loom.
What may a benefactor expect — and not expect?
His name may be inscribed at the entrance, following the ancient usage of the madrasas and fountains of the Kingdom — inscribed, not displayed. With means grow the quality of the restoration, the number of crafts taught, the solidity of the endowment. Never growing: the number of residents, the number of guests, the pace. These limits will be written into the deeds that govern the house.
How do I write to you?
Through the form on the Contact page. State the reason — short stay, craft immersion, residential path, patronage — and, for an application, your age and the craft or discipline that draws you. Every request is read with attention.
Is a resident paid for what he does?
No, and neither is he an employee. He receives lodging, the table and everything he needs — clothing, tools, care and books come from the house — with nothing withheld from him and nothing counted against him. The necessary being covered, each man has a personal allowance for what is not, and more of it if he asks.
Alongside that, a savings account accumulates in his name throughout his years of residence. It is provision and not deferred wages, and is deposited outside and in each man’s own name, so that a man leaves here with something in front of him. The rule fits in one sentence: no one who lives here is paid, no one who is paid lives here.
Is money needed in order to be received?
No. A young man without means is received free of charge, and nothing in the house sets him apart: not the room, not the place at table, not the clothing, which is handed to him complete on arrival as it is to everyone.
The house lives on the work of its workshops, on study bursaries, on the support of its patrons — gifts and bequests —, on institutional funds and on the contribution of those families able to give one. To this is added the fixed annual sum that Al-Munya pays to the House.
The Fondaco and the law
Is this a form of extraterritoriality?
No, and the distinction is substantial. No exemption is asked for, and no territory, no fiscal autonomy, no migration policy and no exemption from laws of general application is obtained. The ordinary authorisations are applied for as anyone applies for them: the house, and the cooperative for the farming side, complete the formalities and ask the competent administrations for the permits the law provides for — building, health, water abstraction, entry in the registers. The association is subject to Italian criminal law, labour law, tax law and building regulations exactly like a private school.
What changes is only the relationship among the members, who accept by contract rules of work and of common life. The same faculties are in daily use among religious orders, professional bodies and sports federations.
Is it a religious body?
No. The statutes say so in express terms: the association does not conduct worship, is not the expression or emanation of any confession or religious authority, and does not proselytise.
The religious affiliation of the rifāq is their own affair. The house makes a space available for the prayer of those who wish it, and neither attendance nor abstention has any bearing on admission, on membership rights, on the assessment of the work or on continued residence.
Admission is mixed in faith and culture, and secular: one is admitted by name and by aptitude, not by faith. Young men of Islamic and Arab culture and young men of Western and Christian culture may live in the same house. Common life — workshop, shared meals, horsemanship and the disciplines of furūsiyya — is a trial of mutual knowledge, not a programme of dialogue nor a religious preparation for Fez.
What is the relation to the Riad in Fez?
The two houses are kindred, not twin. They share the niẓām ad-dār, the signs and the measure of small houses; in Fez the threshold is proper and cultic, in Ragusa mixed in faith and culture, and secular. The Riad is not a branch of the Funduq, nor its proof. No shore is master of the other.
Whoever, in Ragusa, masters the craft in a house mixed in faith and culture is not prepared for Fez as for a next degree. He acquires, if anything, an understanding of a civilisation through craft and through the discipline of the body. Any later approach to the Riad remains an adult and personal choice.
Is a house for a single community not a form of separation?
It would be a separation if membership derived from origin. That is not the case: one is admitted by name, on one’s own application, and any application may be refused. Nobody belongs to the house on account of origin, descent or faith.
To this is added the reciprocity clause, by which the statutes and the rules are available, on the same terms, to any community that wants to found a similar house. The history of the fondaci shows that, when the agreement stops being reciprocal, the house becomes a guarded enclosure within a generation; the safeguards serve to make that passage structurally expensive.
Why is nothing sold to the public?
For an arithmetical reason. Work sold at retail margins does not sustain properly paid masters, and a workshop that begins to make small objects for sale shifts the apprentices’ time to where the return is immediate, ceasing to be a school within two years.
Production is therefore to commission, in single pieces or short series, for architecture and interior practices, restoration sites, institutions, collectors and art publishers.
What does a funder get?
An economic position, in one of the two forms described on the page on support, and no power over the assembly. The statutes expressly exclude powers of appointment, additional voting rights, special categories of members and the power to suspend the effect of resolutions, and forbid the contribution of means to be made conditional on the granting of any of these powers.
The paying hospitality is the part of the operation with revenue, margin and a way out, and it is financed separately with its own investors.
What happens if the project fails?
The five conditions that would count as a verdict are fixed in advance and published. The remaining property, in the event of dissolution, is transferred to another Third Sector body with similar purposes, in accordance with the law.
It is worth noting that the useful result does not depend on success. A house that fails according to criteria declared in advance produces a piece of information that does not exist today, namely whether rules accepted by contract can hold a community together without the permission of a State.
Do minors take part in the life of the house?
No. The association is made up of adults, and 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 distinct spaces, normally at schools or training institutions of the territory, with dedicated staff and in compliance with the legal obligations on the protection of minors.
Are women admitted?
Not to residence. The house is intended for young men: the manual craft, the futuwwa of the workshop and furūsiyya have come down to us within male company, and the education the house practises presupposes the dynamics of a cohort of young men living and working together. 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, 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.
Can it be visited?
Not yet. The property has not been acquired and the restoration has not begun. There will then be three kinds of hospitality, and what distinguishes them is the reason one comes. Whoever wants to know the house because he intends to stay in it does the paid trial and lodges in the House’s dormitories. Whoever wants to know it without putting himself forward as a member asks for a fixed-term stay, from two weeks to three months, and pays nothing, because hospitality is free. The nudamāʾ and their guests stay in Dār al-Diyāfa, inside Al-Munya, at their own expense: they may be refused, and the stay opens no way into the association.
In the meantime the useful way to get in touch is to write.