Glossary

Funduq (فندق)

funduq

A walled house, in a foreign city, where a community lodged, stored goods, prayed and settled its own disputes. From the Greek pandokeion, the inn open to whoever arrives. From funduq derive the Italian fondaco, the Venetian fontego, the Castilian alhondiga and the Catalan alfondec.

Funnacu

Sicilian form of fondaco, in the sense of an inn with stables. Nineteenth-century lexicography records the funnacaru, the innkeeper.

Dar al-Hiraf (دار الحرف)

dar al-hiraf

House of the crafts. It is the name of the protocol common to the two houses, the Sicilian one and the one in Fez.

Al-Munya (المنية)

al-munya

In Andalusian usage, the suburban villa with garden. In the project it designates the guesthouse, run by a distinct legal entity with its own members and its own investors, which pays the House a fixed annual sum.

Dar al-Bidaya (دار البداية)

dar al-bidaya

The house of the beginning. It designates the trial wing, where one stays without payment: those who have applied for admission stay there for the trial period, and anyone who wants to know the house without putting himself forward as a member stays there on a fixed-term stay. Whoever comes to rest and not to know the house is a guest of the Munya and pays. It is a building of the House, and not a distinct legal entity.

An-Nudama (الندماء)

an-nudamaʼ

The companions of the table. It designates the association of the supporters, who lodge at the Munya and have no voice in the deliberations of the House.

Futuwwa (فتوة)

futuwwa

The code of conduct of the craft brotherhoods: loyalty among companions, obligation towards those who have less, self-mastery, and reciprocal duties between master and apprentice.

Tahkim (تحكيم)

tahkim

Arbitration. In the project it designates the settlement of disputes among members before a panel of three.

Rafiq, rifaq (رفيق، رفاق)

rafīq, pl. rifāq

The companion, the companions. It is the name by which the members of the house call one another, and corresponds to the member and members of the founding documents.

Al-majlis (المجلس)

al-majlis

The body of the rifāq gathered to deliberate. It corresponds to the assembly of the members: it approves the accounts, elects and removes the majlis al-umanā, decides on exclusions and on the niẓām ad-dār.

Majlis al-umana (مجلس الأمناء)

majlis al-umanāʾ

The council of trustees, of three or five members elected by the majlis from among the rifāq. It corresponds to the governing body; each of its members is an amīn.

Hay'at at-tahkim (هيئة التحكيم)

hayʾat at-taḥkīm

The arbitral panel of three members to which disputes among rifāq in contractual and associational matters are referred.

Nizam ad-dar (نظام الدار)

niẓām ad-dār

The rules of the house: hours, shifts, use of the common spaces, custody of the tools, internal sanctions. Resolved by the majlis and reviewed at least once a year.

Muallim (معلّم)

muʿallim

The master of the workshop. The function pertains to the organisation of the work and to technical responsibility, and confers no further right in the majlis.

Na'ib (نائب)

nāʾib

The muʿallim’s deputy in the workshop. Like all operational functions, it is not worth one vote more.

Sani (صانع)

ṣāniʿ

One who works in the workshop while learning the craft. He corresponds to the apprentice of the apprenticeship contract.

Zellij (زليج)

zillij

Mosaic of tiles cut with a chisel one by one and composed by geometric tessellation. From the same term derives the Spanish azulejo.

Muqarnas (مقربص)

muqarnas

Honeycomb construction in plaster or wood that joins a curved surface to a flat one. In Italian mocarabe is also used.

Yeseria

Spanish term for decoration in carved, run or moulded plaster.

Alfiz

Rectangular frame enclosing an arch, characteristic of Andalusian architecture.

Hammam (حمّام)

ḥammām

The steam bath, direct heir of the Roman baths. In the house it belongs to the working day and not to the courtesy services, since the hot room, heated from the floor, and the circuit of the outfit that passes through it make it part of the work.

Tadelakt (تادلاكت)

tadelakt

Polished lime plaster treated with black soap, waterproof and without joints. It is the traditional finish of the surfaces of the hammam, and it is among the items that most easily overrun the estimate.

Adab (أدب)

adab

Bearing, and letters together. It designates both the good manners learned by standing beside those who practise them and the body of writings that transmits them: in the workshops the two things were not separated.

Fisqiya (فسقية)

fisqiya

Basin at floor level, at the centre of the courtyard, designed to expose to the air the largest possible surface of water.

Salsabil (سلسبيل)

salsabil

Inclined slab, often rippled, down which water runs in a thin sheet. The form maximises the surface exposed to the air, and with it evaporation, oxygenation and the sound that covers voices.

Qanat (قناة)

qanat

Gently sloping draining gallery, with intermediate shafts, that captures groundwater and carries it by gravity. A network of them survives in the plain of Palermo.

Acequia

Andalusian irrigation channel, with distribution by regulated turns. In Sicilian saia, from the Arabic saqiya.

Alberca

Storage tank of the Andalusian garden and farm. In Sicilian gebbia, from the Arabic jabiya.

Aljibe

Cistern, often public and built against the mosque. From the Arabic al-jubb.

Senia

Noria, water wheel for lifting water. From the Arabic saniya; the term is still alive in Sicilian.

Scirocco chamber

Vaulted underground room, cooled by the passage of running water in a channel, often grafted onto a qanat. The type spreads in the villas of Palermo between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

Neviera

Pit or buried dome where the winter snow, covered with ferns and leaves, was kept until summer. A trade documented on the Iblei and on Etna between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.

Malqaf and badgir (ملقف)

malqaf

Wind-catching devices belonging respectively to Egypt and the Levant the first, to Persia and the Gulf the second. They are not used in the project, because they answer climates different from that of the Iblei.

Al-ala (الآلة)

al-āla

The classical Arab-Andalusian music of the Maghreb, for an orchestra of instruments: the repertoire brought to North Africa by the exiles of al-Andalus and preserved in collections of nawbat. It is the music of the concerts of the public programme.

Malhun (ملحون)

malḥūn

Sung poetry in dialectal Arabic, born in the craft guilds of the Moroccan cities. It is a repertoire of the crafts, and not of the court like al-ala: that is why it sits well in a house of the crafts.

Qasida (قصيدة)

qaṣīda

The classical Arabic ode, with a single rhyme and constant metre. The quotations from Ibn Hamdis and Ibn Zaydun on these pages are taken from qasa’id.