The two houses and the bodies that stand beside them carry five crests of the same series: an eight-pointed star outlined in gold, in the form of the geometric seal common to the Mediterranean tradition. Within the star there is always a building, rendered in gold, and beside it what is alive, rendered in silver: the trees, the water, the stars. The crests carry no lettering, no human figures and no religious signs. Each crest names the building from which the body takes its form.
رياض الأنس
A medina gate: the crenellated body with the horseshoe arch at street level, the twin window and the turret above, the curtain walls running away on either side and two palms rising over the ramparts. It is the gate of a walled city, and the house stands within those walls: in Fez the riad does not face the street, and whoever enters is admitted by name.
Al-uns is gathered company, the settled familiarity of people who are at ease together.
الفندق الصقلي
The portal of a funduq, with the muqarnas vault above the arch and the bands of ornament around it. The leaves stand open and the courtyard shows behind, with its two orders of loggias, which is the form of the building: the workshops and the stores on the ground floor, the lodgings above. On either side two silver carob trees with their pods, the tree of the Iblean plateau where the house stands.
Funduq, from the Greek pandokheion, is the inn of foreign merchants; in Italian fondaco, in Venetian fontego.
المُنية
A garden pavilion, with three open arcades and a pitched roof, reflected in a still basin; cypresses on either side, and two pomegranates on the scroll. The munya is the villa with garden and land outside the walls in al-Andalus and the Maghreb: the almunia of Spanish documents. Beside the house, in a separate building with its own entrance, with its own accounts and with no voice in the resolutions.
The crest is the same in both seats. Al-Munya is the body; inside it, Dār al-Asl and Dār al-Diyāfa.
الندماء
A room in the evening: under the central arch a lit brazier with its smoke rising, silver stars on the vault and in the grilles of the two side windows, and at the base a facing of zellige. The nudamāʾ are the companions of the table, in the singular nadīm. In the project they name An-Nudamāʾ, the body of the ninety-nine founders: it has its own treasury, with which it funds the Riad, and it is not a house. The founders have no voice in the resolutions of the house.
It is the only crest of the series with a night scene.
الميثاق
The fountain hall of the Zisa in Palermo, Arab-Norman work of the twelfth century: the niche with its muqarnas vault, the mouth from which the water runs down over the herringbone-cut slab, the channel that crosses the floor between two square basins. On the walls the zellige dado and the band of carved stucco. On either side a palm and an olive tree, the two houses. The rule of water and masonry mass is the same in both houses, and the Zisa is that same architecture built on the European shore, in Norman Palermo, following architectural forms of Islamic tradition.
Mithaq is the written pact, the charter: the word with which Arabic names founding charters.
Four crests belong to the places that stand within or beside the two houses: the settled community of Fez, the two dwellings of Al-Munya and the land, Ar-Raḥl.
دار الضيافة
The long-necked ewer set in the basin, under the niche arch, with the folded linen hanging from the rim: this is the first gesture the house makes to whoever arrives, water poured over the hands. The two bitter orange trees are those of the patios of Fez. The gesture is the same for every guest.
Diyafa is hospitality owed. Dār al-Diyāfa receives, inside Al-Munya, the nudamāʾ and their guests, the same in Fez and in Sicily.
الرواق
The three-arched portico gives the settled community its name; on the threshold, an earthenware pot holds a young palm between the grown palms of the Riad’s crest. The young masters who, after their apprenticeship, choose to stay in residence under the same rule give the house its continuity.
The riwaq is the portico. The community of the house has two parts: the apprentices, who stay until mastery, and the young masters of Ar-Riwāq, who choose to remain. These keep the thresholds and the workshops: they are a pillar of the house.
دار الأصل
The same arrangement as Ar-Riwaq, with the arch and the tree of the place: three round arches on squared stone piers, a floor of stone slabs, and on the threshold the earthenware pot with a young carob. At the sides, the two grown carobs of the Funduq’s crest. Dār al-Aṣl is, inside Al-Munya, the house that receives without charge those invited by the community: the costs fall on the company. The same name and the same function hold in Fez and in Sicily. An-Nudama, the ninety-nine founders, has no lodging here: it has a treasury, with which it funds the Riad.
Asl is the origin.
الرحل
The gebbia, the open masonry tank that gathers the water, with the channel that feeds it and the one that carries water to the ploughed fields. At the sides an olive and an almond in flower, the trees of the twenty-three hectares. It is the only crest of the series in which the water works instead of resting. Ar-Raḥl is the land of the two houses: in Fez the garden with its vegetable plot and orchard inside the house, in Sicily the twenty-three hectares of the masseria.
Rahl was the farmstead of Arab Sicily, the word inside Racalmuto and Regalbuto; gebbia comes from jabiya, the cistern, and saia from saqiya, the channel.
Beside the crests run the workshop signs and the six threshold emblems, alike in the two houses. In both, work begins with the fine saddlery workshop; the other crafts will follow.
