The majlis
An-Nudama
The ninety-nine founders
The house is Al-Munya. The majlis is An-Nudama. The two names do not merge: one is the built body, the other the closed company that sits there.
An-nudamāʾ (الندماء) are the companions of the table; in the singular, nadīm. In this project, An-Nudama is the body of the ninety-nine founders: a distinct body, with its own treasury, which funds the Riad. It is not a house, and it has no voice in the deliberations.
The crest
The association carries its own, the only night scene in a series otherwise made of gates, courtyards and gardens: a room in the evening, a lit brazier under the arch, silver stars on the vault and in the window grilles, a dado of zellij.
What it does, and what it does not
It carries the beginning
It gathers those who support the house at the moment when an entry share matters more than a regular subscription.
Its members lodge at Dar al-Bidaya
When they come, they are received in Al-Munya, at Dar al-Bidaya. It is not a stay open to the public.
It does not govern the Riad
The rules of the house of formation give its decisions to the majlis al-umanāʾ and its disputes to the hayʾat at-taḥkīm. An-Nudama sits on neither, and the separation is written into the statutes rather than left to custom.
Why the separation holds
A house that trains young men and depends on those who fund it ends by teaching what pleases those who fund it.
The distance between the two bodies is what allows the founders to be generous without becoming a power, and the house to receive without deforming.
What a founder obtains, in sum: a house that exists, a place at its table when he comes, and the right to say he was there at the beginning — with no vote on the common life.