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<\/a>\nAlla: Every derb, or residential street, should have a door at its beginning, and that door should be watched by a guardian.\u00a0 The guardian will ask of each visitor: where are you going? who are you coming to see? how long will you stay?\u00a0 Only in the past 60-70 years has the tradition of the doors been lost, the doors themselves sold, the guardians unemployed.\u00a0 This entry (to Dar Seffarine) is actually the door to the street.\u00a0 Since there are only two houses on the street, the government lets us maintain the street door between us.
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<\/a>\nThe riad is the garden (visible just through the window above the right-hand door); the house or dar exists just beside the garden.\u00a0 A duera is a small house connected to another house: servants\u2019 quarters, housing the servants and slaves who served the family of the dar.
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<\/a>\nWhen you come to the house proper, you will notice that the door that opens for daily use is on the right side.\u00a0 You use your right hand to open the door. All this emphasis on the right hand comes from the Quran, which teaches that the right hand is the good hand.
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<\/a>\nThe door opens to the inside of the house, and you find yourself in the corridor.\u00a0 Every house has a corridor: it is an essential part of the house.\u00a0 Sometimes, the corridor is only a meter long; sometimes it is much longer and has a door at each end; but all traditional Fassi houses have a corridor.\u00a0 To be polite, you stand in the corridor as your host goes into main part of the house and tells the women to leave, that a guest will be entering.
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<\/a>\nNotice the square holes down at foot level: these are ventilation for the basement.\u00a0 Fassi houses have basements, with columns and arches, where one can escape the heat of the summer.\u00a0 Some houses, you enter, and then go four or five steps down: again, the principle is to use the cooling available below grade.
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<\/a>\nAlso in the corridor, you may see windows to the street: this will help with ventilation.
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<\/a>\nThe street itself may be roofed (as seen in the second photo of this post) to create a tunnel to help move the breeze through the space.
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<\/a>\nAbove your head, you may see a boxed in area.\u00a0 This is a storage space for taxes, or zakat, the charitable giving obligatory in Islam.\u00a0 At the end of Ramadan, each household had to give 1.5 kilos of flour to the poor [multiplied by some factor, it seems to me\u2014bb].\u00a0 That boxed area made it possible for householders to buy the flour when it was cheap, store it, and then distribute it at the appropriate moment.
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<\/a>\nImmediately inside the door to the house, you see another door, leading to an internal staircase: this allows the man of the family to visit one of his wives without the others having to know.\u00a0 Separate doors for separate wives: this minimizes conflict within the family.
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\nOn the wall in our corridor, we have hung the contract of sale for our house.\u00a0 As you can see, this is a large document, recording the most recent three sales.\u00a0 The three pages\u2014one for each separate sale\u2014are bound together.\u00a0 Every time the house is sold, the oldest contract is removed, and the newest contract connected to the document.<\/p>\n
At the end of the corridor, we have another door\u2014a door within the door.\u00a0 The larger door allows for large items to enter or leave the home; the small door, for everyday use, forces the person entering to duck.\u00a0 You must enter the house with respect.\u00a0 When you have stepped through the doorway and you straighten up, you raise your eyes to the calligraphy opposite, which reads: \u201cAll this belongs to God\u201d or “There is no power but God.” This saying counterbalances pride in the owner of the house and envy in the visitor. Above, there is a mezzanine for the women’s use, where the women could sit and listen to the men’s conversation without being seen. To complement Alla’s presentation, here’s a map of a traditional Fassi house before the Protectorate from Roger Le Tourneau’s book: Here you can see the stairs, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the entryway. \u00a0 \u00a0But what stays with you after a visit to Dar Seffarine is the glory of that courtyard, lifting the eye to \u00a0wonders overhead.<\/p>\n In this post, I’m trying to reconstruct a presentation given by\u00a0Alla of Dar Seffarine, an architect originally from Iraq, but now a long-time resident of F\u00e8s. \u00a0 Alla and his wife Kate own the guesthouse Dar Seffarine; Alla also specializes in reconstructing traditional houses in the F\u00e8s medina, so he has thought deeply about the … Continue reading F\u00e8s: domestic architecture and its logic<\/span>
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\nFinally, you find the courtyard on your right.\u00a0 You will never enter a traditional house directly: always, you turn to discover the house, the central courtyard.
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\nThat courtyard is open to allow for gradual cooling overnight. \u00a0Houses in F\u00e8s were single-storey buildings originally.\u00a0 Seffarine\u2019s small minaret tells the story: the minaret must always rise above surrounding buildings, but today that minaret is dwarfed by the houses and buildings around it. \u00a0Originally, the houses would have been a single story, but as the city grew and wealth increased, homeowners expanded their houses upwards, building additional living quarters around the existing courtyard.
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\nOn either side of the courtyard, two salons face each other: one salon is for family use; one is for entertaining guests. \u00a0This salon is a man’s space.
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\n[BB: From the inside, the mezzanine is fabulously decorated with ornate zouaq–painted wood–but it’s a small space, too low to stand in. \u00a0Definitely only a space for sitting on the floor and listening.]
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\nThe norm in domestic architecture as in more monumental or sacred spaces, is to decorate the floor and lower areas with zellij, tiles in complex geometric patterns; above the zellij comes plaster (often plain, then carved), calligraphy (in plaster or tile), and then carved or painted wood. \u00a0Dates in houses are recorded in terms of the Hijra or Islamic calendar–a lunar calendar starting with 622, the year Mohammed moved to Medina–and they normally just register the date the most recent plaster was finished.<\/p>\n
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