Masters and Staff Wanted
These positions are not for residents, but for salaried masters and professionals who come to pass on their art or run the household, without entering the circle of the residency. For master craftsmen (maalem), the mission goes beyond technical teaching: to pass on a gesture is to pass on a way of being within the craft — the same demand carried by the futuwwa.
Each master has their own fully equipped workshop, with motivated apprentices ready to receive what they have to pass on. When a workshop in the medina closes for lack of a successor, Riad Al-Uns can offer its tools — and its knowledge — a second life.
CRAFTS OF THE HAND
Master Artisans Wanted
Priority given to transmission — one maalem per discipline, committed for the long term.
- Master calligrapher (khaṭṭāṭ) — Maghrebi khatt.
- Master zellige craftsman — cutting, laying, Marinid tradition.
- Master carved plaster craftsman (gebs) — stucco, muqarnas.
- Master weaver — silk, gold thread, tirāz.
- Master carpenter / wood carver — carving, cedar.
- Master perfumer — distillation, essences.
BODY, WORD AND SOUND
Discipline Masters Wanted
- Master of Andalusian music (al-âla) — oud, ney, chant, nouba repertoire.
- Master of taḥṭīb — stick art.
- Shaykh al-malḥūn — sung poetry of the guilds.
- Maâlem gnawa — guembri, qraqeb, transmission of the brotherhoods.
- Master of Musara — traditional wrestling.
- Master archer (rimāya).
- Master of horsemanship (furūsiyya).
- Master of traditional fencing (sayf wa-l-turs).
- Master of zūrkhāne (javānmardi) — mīl, sang, kabbāde.
OTHER ROLES
What Keeps the House Running
Beyond the masters, a residence house needs essential day-to-day functions. Everyday tasks — keeping one's room, washing dishes, serving at table, looking after certain common areas — fall to the residents themselves; the rest calls for a regular salaried presence.
- Head of the communal kitchen
- Gardener — upkeep of the garden and orange trees
- Administrative coordinator
- Communications and website manager
- Housekeeping staff (2 to 3 positions) — kitchen, hammam, training hall, laundry and ironing; open preferably to young people in difficulty seeking work
- Maintenance man — plumbing, electrical, small repairs
- Master tailor (khayyat) — upkeep and repair of the house's clothing, with a helper chosen among the residents
- Non-resident nurse / first-aid attendant — basic care, health monitoring
- Steward (wakīl) — bookkeeping and purchasing
- Driver — errands and deliveries
- Hammam & sports facilities manager — supervision of the hammam, changing rooms and training hall
Some of these roles may be combined or evolve according to the skills of the person recruited.
THREE CHARGES HELD FROM WITHIN
The faqih, the instructor and the bawwab
These three charges cannot be held at fixed hours: they call for living in the house and sharing its rhythm.
The faqih — the lesson and the hours of prayer
The instructor — a strength that is trained
The bawwab — keeping the threshold
Resident faqih
He gives the lessons in doctrine — Qur'an, fiqh, ʿaqīda — and keeps the hours of the five prayers. He lives in the house: what is transmitted passes as much through shared meals and shared silences as through lessons, and a teacher who arrives at the appointed hour forms no one.
His charge is the timetable and the teaching, not the government of the house: he does not decide admissions, does not arbitrate disputes between residents and holds no power of sanction. His authority comes from what he knows. The house seeks him young — close in age to those he teaches, able to live among them —, trained in Mālikī fiqh and Ashʿarī ʿaqīda, at ease with the Moroccan musical and confraternal tradition, for a renewable mandate of a few years.
Physical training instructor
He leads the daily training of the body and prepares the residents for the disciplines of the house — taḥṭīb, musāraʿa, archery, zūrkhāne. The word riyāḍa first meant the schooling of a horse before it came to mean the exercise of the body: its root is the very one that gives riyāḍ. In it one hears what is expected — a strength that is educated, not displayed.
The point is to make these young men genuinely strong: a back, hands and breath that will hold through a day in the workshop and through a whole life. Useful strength, then, and not a silhouette: the training hall serves the craft and the disciplines, never the mirror. An instructor who demands, who pushes, who picks up the one who gives in — and who knows where the exercise stops.
The charge calls for a physical presence the residents recognise of their own accord: at that age authority passes through the body before it passes through speech, and an instructor no one seeks to match obtains nothing. The tradition has a name for such a man — the pahlavān, champion of the zūrkhāne, who is held in honour neither for his strength nor for his build, but for the uprightness and generosity with which he uses them.
The charge is held from within: he trains with them, shares the hall, the hammam and the common spaces, and lives at the rhythm of the house. Like the others, he is close to them in age.
Bawwab
This charge is not open to application: it is held by a resident, chosen among those most advanced in the disciplines of the body. Keeping the door is his work and his contribution to the house, as another holds his in the workshop. What he does at the threshold is described in Threshold & rooms.
APPLY
Send Your Application
If you are a master of a craft or discipline, or if one of the other roles interests you, write to us.
The terms on this page are gathered in the glossary of the house.