The Charter
Al-Mīṯāq is not a third house. It is the charter that binds two houses of the crafts, making them recognisable to one another.
Two houses, one rule.
The Riyāḍ al-Uns in Fez and Al-Funduq aṣ-Ṣiqillī in the province of Ragusa are two residential houses of the crafts founded on the same rules, the nizam ad-dar. Members sign it on entering.
The rule gives measure to the hours of work, to conduct in the common rooms, to the terms of apprenticeship, to the ownership of tools and of what is made, and to internal arbitration. One enters by admission and leaves freely.
“What unites them is the statute; what distinguishes them is the threshold.”
Kindred houses, not twins
In Fez, a patio house in the medina, with a threshold proper to it and cultic. In Sicily, a masseria in the Iblean landscape, with admission mixed in faith and culture, and secular. Life takes different forms, but the charter remains common.
Read the rule