Glossary

An Arab-Andalusian dwelling organised around a garden or a courtyard open to the sky. The word is an Arabic plural — of rawḍa, garden — and names the gardens first, only then the house that encloses them.

→ See Garden & kitchen garden · Spaces

Cordial intimacy, reassuring familiarity, the company that drives out solitude. Not noise nor confusion: the full quiet of one who knows he is not alone.

→ See Riad Al-Uns

Inner desolation, the isolation that estranges a man from himself and from others: the exact opposite of al-uns.

→ See Riad Al-Uns

“House”, in the full sense: the building and those who live in it. The word opens the name of any institution that understands itself as a household — Dar al-Hiraf, dar al-tirāz.

→ See Dar al-Hiraf

The room, the chamber, and by extension the household; in poetry, the verse. The chambers of the hammam bear the name.

→ See Hammam

The companionship ideal of the medieval Islamic world: it bound gesture to honour, hand to given word, apprentice to master. Generosity, loyalty, courage, self-mastery, service.

→ See Futuwwa

“Young man.” Futuwwa is the quality of the fatā — not youth in years, but an inner disposition: generous to the point of sacrifice, loyal unto death, brave without vanity, master of himself before he is master of anything else.

→ See Futuwwa

The exact Persian counterpart of Arabic futuwwa — same structure, same demand: generosity, loyalty, self-mastery, service. The two traditions fed one another for centuries.

A Persian term, not Arabic: written with the Persian final yāʾ (ی).

→ See Javanmardi

The hero of the zurkhane. He is honoured not for strength alone but for generosity and uprightness — exactly like the fatā of futuwwa.

→ See Javanmardi

Etiquette, bearing, rightness of conduct and of speech. The master of a craft does not transmit technical gestures alone: he transmits an adab, a way of standing in the craft and in life. It is also what traditional dress carries within itself — measure and dignity.

→ See Futuwwa · Dress code

Truthfulness: word and deed coincide, without gap, without exception of circumstance.

→ See Futuwwa

Faithfulness to the given word, to the master, to the brothers, to the pact — until it costs, and above all then.

→ See Brotherhood & uprightness · Futuwwa

Radical generosity: to give before being asked, to give what costs.

→ See Futuwwa

Courage — not only before danger, but in self-mastery: the capacity to contain one's own force rather than deploy it without measure.

→ See Futuwwa

The lower soul, seat of appetite and pride. It is what the fatā learns to govern before claiming to govern anything else: his workshop, his house, one day perhaps a family.

→ See Futuwwa

Service rendered — to the house, to the brothers, to the guest. Workshop dress remains the same gandoura worn throughout the house, cut short: even in the gesture of service, the traditional form is never set aside.

→ See Dress code · Charity & service

Almsgiving, the free gift. In the Islamic tradition its worth lies precisely in the discretion with which it is done.

→ See Charity & service

The knotting of the belt: the gesture by which the futuwwa brotherhoods sealed a commitment taken.

→ See Futuwwa

The craft guilds (sing. ṣinf), to which many futuwwa brotherhoods were bound. The craft was never merely a technique: it was the vehicle of an ethic.

→ See Futuwwa

The medieval futuwwa manuals: required virtues, rules of common life, master-disciple relation, outward signs and degrees of commitment. They codified wrestling, archery and horsemanship as formative disciplines on a par with craft and prayer.

A Persian title (nāme, “book, epistle”), for a largely Arabic-Persian corpus.

→ See Futuwwa

Divine oneness. The geometric interlace that repeats with no visible beginning or end is read, in Islamic thought, as its image: unity behind the multiplicity of forms.

→ See The five crafts

The trace, the vestige, what remains after a passage — and, in religious vocabulary, a report transmitted from one generation to the next. At the Riad, the name given to the work each resident leaves in the walls at the end of his training. Its use as the name of a house rule belongs to this project.

→ See Al-Athar

The authorisation to transmit, granted by a master to his student. One does not teach because one has learned, but because a master attests that one has learned from him.

→ See Al-Athar · At-Tadbir — Governance

The register. At Dar al-Hiraf, the book in which the works received are entered — the piece, the hand, the master, the year — together with the undertaking to transmit in turn. It stays in the house and is not published.

→ See Al-Athar

The Maghrebi name for the waqf: a property immobilised in perpetuity, which can no longer be sold, given, inherited or mortgaged, and whose fruits are devoted to the purpose for which it was constituted. The madrasas and fountains of Fès lived on this instrument for centuries.

→ See Support the project

The art of conducting a household: the measured governance of the home and of oneself. It is the classical word Islamic political thought reserved for the government of the house.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

“The government of the house.” Ibn Sīnā made it, at the scale of the household, the counterpart of the siyāsa that governs the city.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

The government of the city — the political order, of which tadbīr is the domestic equivalent.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

The modern Arabic calque of “governance”, borrowed from corporate vocabulary. The Riad does not use it: it understands itself as a house, not an institution.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

The head of the house. He wears the colour of no craft: he belongs to no guild, he stands for them all.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance · Dress code

The two counsellors who assist the Ash-Shaykh in the conduct of the house.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

“The deputy”: one of the most advanced pupils of each guild, who assists the other apprentices when the maʿallem is busy or away — never substituting for his authority. A responsibility, not a rank.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance · Dress code

The master of a craft: one who holds both technical mastery and the moral authority to transmit. To transmit a gesture is to transmit a way of standing in the craft.

The Maghrebi form (also mâalem) of classical Arabic muʿallim, “the one who teaches.”

→ See Masters & staff · The five crafts

In Moroccan workshop usage, the apprentice placed under the authority of the maʿallem, who accepts the discipline of the bottega.

In classical Arabic the word means “maker, craftsman”; the apprentice sense belongs to the dialectal usage of the guilds.

→ See The residence

“The belt of mastery”: the four grades of the residency, from undyed rawhide to the grade embroidered in gold thread. Nothing is gained by seniority alone — progression follows competence actually shown.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance · Dress code

Accomplished execution: work carried through to its right perfection, without negligence and without excess.

→ See At-Tadbir — Governance

“The first school”: the family. Formation is not separable from preparation for a household — a man able to hold a craft must also be able to hold a home.

→ See Family & community · Dar al-Hiraf

The gatekeeper, the one who holds the door. At the Riad the charge falls to a resident and not to an employee: keeping the threshold is his work and his share in the house, as another holds his in the workshop.

→ See Threshold & rooms · Masters & staff

“The House of Crafts”: the Riad's school-residence, where five crafts of the hand are transmitted gesture by gesture by a maʿallem.

Ḥiraf (حِرَف) is the plural of ḥirfa.

→ See Dar al-Hiraf

The traditional art craft. It implies not merely technical skill of the hand but a moral discipline: learning to “hold” a craft as one holds a responsibility.

→ See Dar al-Hiraf

The artisan who holds a ḥirfa: one who works matter with intention and exactness.

→ See The five crafts

Making, manufacture: the art of manual skill in its highest sense.

→ See Crafts of the Riad

Sewing and cutting. The Riad's dress is cut by hand by the craftsmen of the house or of the medina, never borrowed from the industrial register.

→ See Dress code

Embroidery. At the Riad it marks the grade belt and the borders of the ceremonial pieces.

→ See Dress code

The Maghrebi script, distinct from eastern naskh and thuluth. Born in al-Andalus, it settled in Fez after the Reconquista.

→ See The five crafts

The calligrapher. “Calligraphy is a geometry of the spirit appearing through an instrument of the body” — Ibn Muqla.

→ See The five crafts · Masters & staff

The reed pen: the cut reed whose angle of nib determines the stroke.

→ See The five crafts

The formula bismillāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm, which opens the Qur'an and paces daily life. It is the first exercise of every apprentice calligrapher: a founding gesture before it is a decorative motif.

→ See The five crafts

The art of glazed ceramic tesserae, cut one by one and assembled according to geometric grids. It was born in Fez under the Merinids, in the 13th–14th centuries.

The term comes from an Arabic root denoting the small polished stone.

→ See The five crafts

The zillīj cutter's hammer: each piece is struck by hand from a monochrome glazed tile.

→ See The five crafts

Carved plaster. Worked fresh with the knife, it covers walls, arches and domes with a vegetal, epigraphic and geometric web.

→ See The five crafts · Crafts of the Riad

The honeycomb or stalactite cells that cover domes, portals and capitals — the mocárabe of the Iberian languages. Brought to its height in the madrasas of Fez.

→ See The five crafts · Crafts of the Riad

The turned-wood screen (mashrabiya): it filters light and sight without stopping the air. Geometric assembly without nail or glue.

→ See The five crafts

The woven or embroidered inscription running along a garment or a house textile — and, by extension, the workshop that produces it.

→ See Crafts of the Riad · The five crafts

The state tirāz workshop, from Fatimid Egypt to Umayyad al-Andalus. There the inscribed cloth sealed the khilʿa.

→ See The five crafts

The tirāz reserved first for the sovereign (khāṣṣa), then extended to dignitaries (ʿāmma).

→ See The five crafts

The gift of a robe of honour: a political gesture as much as a textile one, by which a sovereign both recognised and bound.

→ See The five crafts

In Fez, gold and silver thread. An entire guild, the maʿallemīn sqallī, is devoted to its making: gold beaters, rollers, wire drawers, spinners.

A widespread hypothesis, without settled academic confirmation, links the name to Sicily (Siqilliyya).

→ See The five crafts

The drawloom of brocade, where the roles divide: the zouaq draws the pattern, the nyar mounts the loom, the medewar winds the bobbins, the jebbad weaves — under the authority of the maʿallem.

→ See The five crafts

The alembic. The Arabic word is inherited from Greek ambix and gave, through Spanish, the “alembic” of the European languages.

→ See Perfumes & essences · Crafts of the Riad

The concentrated essence, obtained by slow distillation: for skin and linen, where rose water remains for the face, the table and the rite.

→ See Perfumes & essences · Crafts of the Riad

The school. Bou Inania and al-ʿAttarin, in Fez, remain the most accomplished witnesses of carved plaster, zillīj and cedar wood meeting on a single wall.

→ See The five crafts

Dress, clothing. It denotes not merely a covering of the body but visible dignity, composure, and the respect owed to the place and the community.

→ See Men's dress

Dress. At Dar al-Hiraf, al-kiswa al-khāṣṣa names the house's own system of vestimentary signs: gandora, craft cap, grade belt, khirqa.

→ See Dress code · Men's dress

Adornment. “O children of Adam, wear your finest at every prostration” (sūrat al-Aʿrāf, 7:31) — understood here as cleanliness and decency, not as finery.

→ See Dress code

The covering of what must be covered, according to the propriety of tradition and of prayer: from shoulders to ankles, in clean cloth.

→ See Dress code

Those parts of the body it is proper to cover. In prayer, equality among the pupils prevails over any sign of grade or craft.

→ See Dress code

A straight, light tunic, hoodless, to the ankles. White cotton or satin. It is the garment of prayer: no embroidery, no belt, no sign.

→ See Men's dress · Dress code

A hoodless indoor tunic, a variant of the qamīṣ. At the Riad it is the base garment: cut to suit a trained body, without ever falling into Western fitted tailoring.

→ See Dress code · Men's dress

A long loose robe with a pointed hood (qob). Everyday and outdoor garment: cotton or linen in summer, wool in winter. The backbone of the Maghrebi men's wardrobe.

→ See Men's dress

The pointed hood of the djellaba: it shields from sun and cold.

→ See Men's dress

A wide woollen mantle, open, sleeveless, hooded. Worn over the djellaba in cold weather or on horseback. A sign of dignity and protection.

→ See Men's dress

The house's winter mantle, cut for the cold of mornings and open courtyards.

→ See Dress code

A ceremonial set: a straight tunic closed by a row of ʿaqad buttons, matched to the serwal, with an mdama belt. At the Riad it is the garment of the nāʾib.

→ See Men's dress · Dress code

Wide trousers. At the Riad they replace jeans: in daily life traditional dress is the norm, not the exception.

→ See Men's dress · Dress code

The braided belt, worn over the jabādūr or the tunic, in the tone of the jacket.

→ See Men's dress · Dress code

The hand-braided spherical buttons that close the jabādūr, in the tone of the craft.

→ See Dress code · Men's dress

The traditional Moroccan embroidered cord. It edges the front opening of the gandora in a single colour, recognisable at a glance as the mark of the house.

→ See Dress code

The soft leather slipper, without a stiffened back. At the Riad it is dyed in the colour of the craft, like the whole guild.

→ See Men's dress · Dress code

A small round cap, close-fitted to the skull: the simplest and commonest piece, worn for prayer as in daily life. In Morocco, taguia.

→ See Men's dress

A cylindrical red felt cap, often with a black silk tassel. An Ottoman and Maghrebi urban legacy.

→ See Men's dress

The craft cap of Dar al-Hiraf: stiff felt, vertical sides, flat crown, no tassel, with a fine embroidered border — halfway between the ṭāqiyya and the ṭarbūsh, but plainer. Its colour states the wearer's craft.

→ See Dress code

The turban: a length of cloth wound around the head or the ṭāqiyya. A more solemn variant, still present in traditional circles.

→ See Men's dress

A form close to the ṭāqiyya, softer, sometimes of wool or felt. For daily and prayer use.

→ See Men's dress

The overgarment of the maʿallem, in the colour of his craft, in tone-on-tone woven damask — the passage from a collective visual identity to a fully personal one.

→ See Dress code

The mantle of investiture, bestowed and not merely worn: the master himself clothes the pupil, sealing his entry or his advancement. On the model of the dervish tradition of the khirqa.

→ See Dress code

The bearing that commands respect. It is the one moment where the dress of the house openly seeks it — that of the khirqa; everywhere else, sobriety comes first.

→ See Dress code

The hammam cloth: a single panel of light linen, knotted at the waist. Training closes in the hammam, not in the changing room.

→ See Dress code · Hammam

The length of cloth knotted at the loins, worn beneath the tunic. First term of the layering: izār → serwal → qamīṣ → djellaba or jabādūr.

→ See Men's dress

The short worked-leather breeches, tight at the waist and below the knee, proper to zurkhane wrestling.

→ See Javanmardi · Dress code

The simple length of cloth wound at the waist, worn for ordinary exercise in the zurkhane.

→ See Javanmardi

The leather breeches of Ottoman wrestling. When any loose cloth becomes an obstacle to the grip, only fitted leather remains: two distinct traditions arrived, each in its own way, at the same answer.

A Turkish term. Ottoman wrestling (yağlı güreş) is a lineage distinct from muṣāraʿat al-nūba.

→ See Furusiyya

The long everyday tunics of the Gulf, worn with the ghutra held by the ʿiqāl.

→ See Men's dress

The Gulf head cloth and the black cord that holds it.

→ See Men's dress

The square of cloth draped over the shoulders — the Mashreq and Levantine variant.

→ See Men's dress

The ceremonial mantle of the Gulf, open, often gold-bordered.

→ See Men's dress

The long Persian coat, often open at the front, worn over the pirahan and the shalvār.

→ See Men's dress

The Ottoman wardrobe: baggy trousers, short jacket with open sleeves, cloth sash. No hooded djellaba in this line.

Turkish terms, given here for the comparison of vestimentary lines.

→ See Men's dress

The Arab-Islamic chivalric tradition, uniting body, bow, wrestling and sword under a single system of formation. Before specialising, the body first had to be made capable.

→ See Furusiyya

The horse — the very root of the word furūsiyya: in the strictest sense, horsemanship, the first and oldest of the chivalric disciplines, the one that names all the others.

→ See Furusiyya

Ibn al-Qayyim's treatise, which made furūsiyya a spiritual discipline as much as a physical one.

→ See Furusiyya

Traditional archery: a discipline of posture, breath and presence — the hand settles on the breath before it settles on the target.

→ See Furusiyya

“The sword and the shield”: traditional fencing, where the two hands learn two inseparable tasks.

→ See Furusiyya

The shield: leather stretched over a wooden core, bearing an eight-pointed star, held by a forearm strap and a central grip.

→ See Furusiyya

Wrestling. Body to body with a brother: a school of restraint as much as of strength — mastery of the gesture that could injure and does not.

→ See Furusiyya

Nubian wrestling, attested since ancient Egypt and alive today in Sudan. On sand, with no submission or ground pinning: only the controlled fall of the opponent counts.

→ See Furusiyya

Ottoman oil wrestling, in leather breeches (kispet): a tradition documented for centuries, but distinct from muṣāraʿat al-nūba — the one is fought standing, the other works on the ground.

A Turkish term. The two lineages are not to be conflated.

→ See Furusiyya

“The house of strength”: the traditional Persian gymnasium where javānmardī is practised in the body. Recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

→ See Javanmardi

The slightly sunken octagonal pit at the centre of the zūrkhāne, beneath a dome pierced by a single zenithal opening.

→ See Javanmardi

The master seated apart who paces the exercise with drum and heroic song: he does not command the bodies, he tunes them.

→ See Javanmardi

The instruments of the zūrkhāne: the wooden clubs, the weighted shields, the chained practice bow.

→ See Javanmardi

The art of the stick, born in ancient Egypt and alive in Upper Egypt. It is not a fight but a dialogue: two men, two sticks, a drum rhythm that governs every gesture. The victor is not the one who strikes hard but the one who touches without losing measure.

→ See Choreutics

The taḥṭīb stick: 1.20 to 1.50 metres — long enough to demand precise management of distance, too light to wound gravely if handled rightly.

→ See Choreutics

The drum that governs the taḥṭīb duel, quickening in steps: each change of tempo forces both men into a new reading of the space and of the other's gesture.

→ See Choreutics

The exercise of the body. The word first meant the schooling of a horse — the same root as riyāḍ — and keeps from that origin its exact sense: a strength that is educated, not displayed.

→ See Furusiyya · Masters & staff

Literally “the instrument”: Andalusian music. Born in the courts of al-Andalus, particularly Granada under the Nasrids, it went into exile after 1492 towards Fez, Tetouan and Rabat.

→ See Music & song

The structuring form of al-āla: a long musical suite in movements of rising tempo, each with its own sung poems. Eleven survive today of the twenty-four the oral tradition reports.

→ See Music & song

The lead singer: he carries the poem as much as the melody. The voice is carried, not forced.

→ See Music & song

The art of measured, sung speech, historically bound to the world of the craft guilds of the medinas. Recognised by UNESCO in 2023.

→ See Music & song · Choreutics

The master who transmits a malḥūn repertoire to a few disciples, at the same rhythm of learning as zillīj or calligraphy.

→ See Music & song

The long poem, often of several dozen verses, sung a cappella then taken up by a small ensemble. Its themes range from mystical love to the very concrete evocation of the craft world — tools, gestures, materials.

→ See Music & song

A music of transmission inherited from the brotherhoods of sub-Saharan origin settled in Morocco for centuries: an oral repertoire, outside the written canon of classical Arabic poetry.

→ See Music & song

The three-stringed lute-drum that carries the gnawa: the struck body serves as percussion as much as resonator.

→ See Music & song

The metal castanets of the gnawa, held in pairs and struck on the offbeat.

→ See Music & song

“The night”: the complete gnawa ceremony, which may last a whole night. To each colour of cloth and each rhythm it attaches a precise spiritual entity, which the singing calls up and then quiets.

→ See Music & song · Choreutics

Literally “listening”: the recollected hearing of mystical song and poetry, practised to free the heart from the world's dispersion. Some vigils of the house close upon it.

→ See Choreutics · Life at the Riad

In the Maghreb, the vigil of collective dhikr, often in a circle, carried by the bendir and sometimes the nāy, with a measured swaying of the body.

Quite distinct from the turning of the Mevlevi dervishes, an order born in Konya, foreign to the Riad's tradition.

→ See Choreutics

The repeated invocation of the divine name — the heart of the ḥaḍra.

→ See Choreutics

The single-headed frame drum with snare strings: the rhythmic voice of the ḥaḍra.

→ See Choreutics

The oblique reed flute, low and veiled in tone, long associated with spiritual as much as profane expression.

→ See Music & song

The short-necked, round-bodied lute: the harmonic heart of the Andalusian ensemble.

→ See Music & song

“The middle of the house”: the patio, the inner courtyard open to the sky around which light, water and common life turn.

The word ṣaḥn (صحن), sometimes given as an equivalent, rather denotes the courtyard of a mosque.

→ See Patio

The oasis. It is no gift of chance: it is born of a human group's decision to stay and make scarce water fruitful. The principle that governs the least courtyard of the Riad is already there — water ordered, never wasted.

→ See Spaces

The thin sheet of water running over an inclined stone to maximise evaporation: water as coolant, not as ornament.

→ See Water · Natural coolness

The basin flush with the floor at the centre of the patio: it gives the sky's reflection and the murmur that accompanies conversation. It is found in the Patio de los Leones and the Patio de la Acequia of the Alhambra.

→ See Water · Garden & kitchen garden

An underground drainage gallery, inherited from Persian and Berber techniques: for centuries it brought water to oases and gardens without mechanical pumping.

→ See Water

“The catcher”: the tower that captures the wind and drives it into the house. Its trace appears as early as pharaonic Egypt; the Islamic period took up and refined the technique.

→ See Natural coolness

In Persia and the Gulf, the multidirectional wind tower — rather than one turned to a single prevailing wind. A variant of the same architectural gesture, born of the same need.

→ See Natural coolness

The walled garden, the orchard. At the Riad it is the secret garden, distinct from the main garden and the kitchen garden without being separate from them.

→ See Garden & kitchen garden

The Persian fourfold garden: four channels evoking the four rivers of paradise. Direct continuity in Isfahan and Shiraz, monumentalised in Mughal India.

→ See Garden & kitchen garden · Water

The Greek word behind our “paradise” comes from Old Persian pairi-daēza, “circular enclosure.” From the Achaemenid period the garden is already the image of the cosmos and of royal power.

→ See Garden & kitchen garden

The ewer. To every guest who crosses the threshold the house offers hands washed in rose water, poured from an ibrīq into a ṭisht, before the first word is exchanged.

→ See Water

The copper or tin basin that receives the water poured from the ibrīq: purification as much as welcome.

→ See Water

The courtyard of the Greek house. At Olynthus, houses already opened onto an inner court oriented to catch the low winter sun and to shade itself in summer.

→ See Spaces

The Roman domus is organised around the atrium, an open court gathering rainwater — the same principle that would become, centuries later, the Andalusian and then Moroccan patio.

→ See Patio · Spaces

The fortified Sicilian masseria: closed courtyard, blind outward façades, life turned inward. The same logic as the Andalusian and Maghrebi patio, reached by distinct paths rather than by direct borrowing.

The name most probably comes from Norman-French ballium; a minority hypothesis sees a borrowing from Arabic bahah, “courtyard.”

→ See Patio

The threshold. In the Islamic tradition it is not a simple boundary of property but the site of a rule: one crosses it only after having announced oneself and been received.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The bent vestibule that follows the entrance door and prevents the eye from reaching the courtyard. It is onto the driba, before the bend, that the parlours open.

Moroccan form, a diminutive of derb; classical Arabic says rather saqīfa or dihlīz.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The covered vestibule, the porch that shelters the entrance of a house. A classical term for which the Moroccan driba is the everyday equivalent.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The entrance corridor, between the door and the courtyard — the space that is no longer the street and not yet the house. A word of Persian origin that passed very early into Arabic.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The asking of permission before entering another's house, prescribed in Qur'an XXIV, 27. The verb used by the verse, tastaʾnisū, comes from the root ʾ-n-s — the very one that gives al-uns: to announce oneself is to seek to become familiar.

→ See Threshold & rooms · Riad Al-Uns

Inviolability — of a house, a person, a pledge. What is protected not by a lock but by a rule that each one acknowledges.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The room, and first of all the upper chamber. In the madrasas, the student's cell: a few square metres and a window — narrow by design, so that life is held elsewhere.

→ See Threshold & rooms

The steam bath: purification of the body, regeneration and quiet. Not a quick stop but a passage through chambers of rising heat.

The doubled mīm distinguishes ḥammām, the bath, from ḥamām (حمام), “pigeons.”

→ See Hammam

The disrobing room: here one undresses before entering the sequence.

→ See Hammam

The cold room. The body acclimatises there on entering; one returns to rest there at length, over tea, once the bath is done. It continues the Roman frigidarium.

→ See Hammam

The warm room: the largest, where most time is spent, between light steam, massage and scents. The Roman tepidarium.

→ See Hammam

The hot room, the most intense: the heat opens the pores and prepares the skin for black soap, then for the kessa glove. The Roman caldarium.

→ See Hammam

The furnace room: unseen by the bathers, behind the hot room, it feeds heat to the whole system.

→ See Hammam

The coarse glove. It lifts away what the black soap has softened deep down — never the reverse, never on dry skin.

→ See Hammam

Black soap: a dark olive-oil paste, sometimes enriched with crushed olives, historically tied to centres such as Essaouira. Applied to warm damp skin, it is left to rest several minutes.

→ See Hammam

The massage master of the Maghrebi hammam — and his female counterpart for women's hammams, the two worlds remaining strictly separate. This is no spa masseur: it is a craft transmitted inside the hammam itself, by repeated practice.

→ See Hammam

The “navel stone”: a broad marble platform heated from beneath, at the centre of the hot room, on which the body lies to sweat and be scrubbed.

The element belongs first to the Ottoman hammam tradition, distinct from the Maghrebi and Andalusian tradition to which the Riad belongs.

→ See Hammam

The oil massage after the bath, already practised in Roman and Byzantine thermae — a gesture the hammam inherited and passed on in its own way.

→ See Hammam