Al-Mithaq

Two houses, one rule

The Riad Al-Uns in Fez and Al-Funduq as-Siqilli, in the province of Ragusa, are two houses of the crafts founded on the same rules, the niẓām ad-dār, which members sign on entering and which govern the hours of work, conduct in the common rooms, the terms of apprenticeship, the ownership of tools and of what is made, the grounds and procedure of exclusion and the arbitration clause. Both are houses of common life for young men, masters and apprentices, and in both one enters by admission and leaves freely. They use the same series of signs, and whoever has lived in one recognises the other. What changes is the scale: the first stands inside the medina and works to the narrow measure of a courtyard house, the second occupies a masseria of twenty-three hectares and works to the broad measure of a farming courtyard. The three correspondences that follow say where the two houses answer to one another and where they differ.

The space

At the Riad the space is the patio: high lime walls, no window on the street, the open sky above, at the centre the basins with water in movement and all around the masonry mass that holds the cool in summer and the warmth in winter. This is why the house is called Al-Uns, the gathered company, and its plan obliges an ordered life because everything passes through the courtyard. At the Funduq the space is the courtyard of the Iblean masseria, in pale stone, with the entrance passage and the ranges of building on four sides, and beyond the walls the twenty-three hectares of olive, almond and arable land, the stream lower down and the cisterns for rainwater. The same rule of water and mass holds in both, and the pages on air and water of the two sites answer one another item by item; but in Fez the house measures itself against an alley, in Sicily against a landscape, and the restoration site of the masseria is, for the first intake, the first school of work.

The work

At the Riad the crafts are those of the hand of Fez, calligraphy, zellij, plaster, weaving, wood, and the masters work in the house where they live; beside the workshops, the disciplines of the body, furūsiyya with the horse and the bow, wrestling and swimming, with qualified instructors and without training in weapons, without grades and without rites of passage. At the Funduq the opening craft is one alone, fine saddlery in leather, wood and metal, with the forge for stirrups and harness and the saddler's stitch learned on the offcuts of the saddles, and the work leaves on commission; the horse and the manège are tied to the workshop, and the same disciplines of the body hold with the same exclusions. The rule that binds the two houses lies in the saying carved over the portal of the Funduq, that no one has ever eaten better food than that which comes from the work of his own hand, and in the fact that every member, masters included, wears the same undyed linen and carries no mark of rank.

The order

At the Riad the rules govern a single house, with its council, the majlis al-umanāʾ, and its arbitral panel, the hayʾat at-taḥkīm. Beside it, Al-Munya is the body, and the company that holds it: distinct from the House, with its own members and its own investors. Inside Al-Munya stand two houses: Dar al-Bidaya, which hosts without charge, whose costs fall on the company; and Dar al-Diyafa, the paying guesthouse, whose proceeds remain with the company. The company pays the Riad an annual fee, regardless of profits. An-Nudama is the body of the ninety-nine founders, with its own treasury to fund the Riad: it is not a house. At the Funduq the same rules hold four bodies apart — the House, the farming, Al-Munya and An-Nudama — each with its own assets and its own liability; inside Al-Munya, again, Dar al-Bidaya (the House’s, free) and Dar al-Diyafa (the company, paying). The structure is the same in both seats: the settings change, not the names or the functions. This is the part of the house that is not seen and that decides whether the other two last, because a community with rules of its own lasts as long as the contract it has written, and the contract is the same in both houses.

At the Riad the rules apply to a house inside a city; at the Funduq the same rules apply to a masseria inside a landscape, with land to farm and a workshop that produces. Whoever enters one may move to the other, since the rules, the names and the signs are the same, and the second house serves to prove that rules written for Fez hold outside Fez as well.

Each of the two houses has its own site: www.al-uns.com for the Riad, www.al-funduq.org for the Funduq, www.al-munya.com for Al-Munya.