Fez · Riad Al-Uns
AL-MUNYA
المُنية
Al-Munya is the body in Fez, beside the Riad Al-Uns.
The dwelling of the founding supporters, bound to the Riad by a long pact.
The name is not an ornament. In al-Andalus and the Maghreb, the munya was a villa of retreat: garden, water, shade, chosen company. A house away from the noise, and yet wholly a house.
Al-Munya is a private house, adjoining the Riad Al-Uns wall to wall.
It is not an extension of the house of formation.
It is not a hotel.
It is not an open place.
It is the seat of a closed majlis,
accessible only by co-optation.
The two houses have entirely separate entrances, kitchens, staff and circulations.
A single door in the common wall, openable exclusively from the Riad side.
Living in beauty, when it is not staged, already educates the eye and the body. The quality of the light, the weight of a cloth, the proportion of a patio, an old object that was not produced for you and that one cannot take away: all this precedes discourse.
The spaces
The house
Few spaces, generous, ordered. Each answers to a precise use. Nothing is thought for accumulation or for display.
One does not enter a munya as one enters a hall.
One is received, by degrees.
Threshold
- Sqifa
Entrance vestibule. He who crosses the door does not yet see. The intimacy of the house is guarded before it is offered. - Parlour
First reception, distinct from any space of the Riad. Here one sits before being admitted further.
Heart
- Patio with porticoes and hall
The centre, and the motif of the name. Porticoed patio and major hall that opens directly onto it. Place of presence and shared silence. - Garden
Water, shade, scents. Not a décor: the continuity of the patio toward the sky. - Oratory
Oriented space of prayer, looking onto the patio and the garden.
Permanence
- Guest apartments
Private rooms with their own bathroom. Contained number. - Apartment of honour
Unit of higher rank and greater generosity of space — the rank of the room, not of who occupies it. - Salon
A closed room for conversation, onto the patio.
Service
- Dining room
With complete autonomous kitchen, entirely separate from that of the Riad. - Service quarters
Accessible only to the staff of the Munya. - Discreet store
For valuable textiles, pieces in deposit and objects that must not remain on display.
Threshold
The rule
The number is closed.
Access is by co-optation alone.
What is said here remains here.
The rule precedes the guest.
It is not negotiated upon arrival.
One does not relax it to accommodate.
The guest is received.
He acquires no right over the life of the neighbouring house.
Crossing the common door, if it happens, remains a gesture of those who live there — never a prerogative of the guest.
Beside, in the Riad, it is the men of the house who look. The ṣāniʿ, the nāʾib, the maʿallem, the muqaddam, the shaykh: each, at his degree, holds the measure. They do not judge according to wealth. They judge the man.
At their table, during an archery trial, on a ride in the desert, no one wears his origin on his face. One does not know whether the one who sits beside him is a young man received by hospitality, or the son of a house that could afford the medina. The rule is the same. The gaze is the same.
One does not enter by what one has.
One is looked at for what one is.
Work
The furnishings
The Munya is not furnished once and for all by a decorator.
It is clothed, over time, by the work of the neighbouring house.
The motifs that will return on the walls and the textiles have nothing of an importation. They belong to a repertoire that has already made the journey — from the Islamic Mediterranean toward Venice — and that returns. Few pieces. Few colours. Matte surfaces. Nothing that has not already accomplished the going.
To support this house is to commission a gesture.
In the same city, by the same hand. A hanging, a light, a piece of woodwork.
The workshops of Dar al-Hiraf and the corporations of Fès will progressively supply textiles, stuccoes, ceramics, wood, metal and light. The craft thus has a commissioner before it has a market.
Before the eyes remain also, if any are found, a few old objects that were not produced for the guest and that he cannot acquire. They are neither collection nor museum. They are a model — and a warning.
What crosses the door between the two houses is not the men.
It is the work.
الرِّياضُ لِأَهْلِهِ، لَا أَهْلُهُ لِلرِّياضِ
“The riad is for its own, not its own for the riad.”
Fez and Sicily
The two Munya
Al-Munya is the body, here in Fez as in Sicily: own entrance, same crest, distinct subject. Inside, Dar al-Bidaya lodges the members of An-Nudama; Dar al-Diyafa is the guesthouse.
The settings change, not the names or the functions. A stay at Dar al-Diyafa confers no title on the common life of the House. Apprentices on trial sleep in the House’s dormitories, never in Al-Munya.
The young men of the Funduq have no munya of their own yet. When the collapsed part of the east wing is raised again, the workshops will move into it, and the spaces facing the central court may become an open munya, with its salsabīl and a channel running to the basin set flush with the floor.
The Sicilian house can be seen here: www.al-funduq.org.