Living in a World Heritage Site: ethnography of the Fez medina (Morocco)
A dissertation by Manon Istasse submitted to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Free University of Brussels for the degree of Doctor in Anthropology
Members of the jury: David Berliner (University of Brussels) Mathieu Hilgers (University of Brussels) Jean-Louis Genard (University of Brussels) Christoph Brumann (Max Planck Institute in Halle) Lynn Meskell (University of Stanford)
September 2013
i Acknowledgments
Carrying a fieldwork investigation and writing a dissertation is only made possible with the help and support of such a number of people that I can scarcely do justice to all in what follows. Furthermore, words alone are hardly adequate to fully express my gratitude for the kindness and guidance each and every one awarded me during these four years of joy, satisfaction, and difficulties between Fez and Rabat in Morocco, Brussels in Belgium, Halle in Germany, as well as the many cities which hosted conferences and other academic events I took part in. I must begin this list of acknowledgments by thanking the financial support I received from the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) in Belgium, without which any research would have been impossible in the first place. Deep and sincere thanks go to those who, in one way or another, made my research possible: Jawad Yousfi and his family for their warm welcome in their house and for the many discussions and debates we had, Abdelhay Mezzour for his support and help with the Ziyarates families and for the football matches we watched at the Firdaous, Pierre-Marie Roux and his wife Caroline, as well as, among others, Bernard, Kleo Brunn, Françoise, Christian, Jenifer, Josephine, Naïma, Christophe and Vincent, Nordin, Omar, Amina, Vanessa and Vincent, Bonnie and Gilles, Fettah, Anouar, Pauline, Didier, Kenza, Abdelwahed, Stephen, Hugo and his wife, Mohammed, and Zarha for opening the doors of their house to me, and the staff of the Centre Jacques Berque in Rabat, of the Archives Municipales in Fez and of the Institut français in Fez. They gave their time even as their professional and familial lives were already busy. Special thanks are rendered here to Christine Devictor and Raymond Prieto-Perez, for the numerous dinners they invited me to and for being my "parents" in Fez. I express my gratitude also to Najib, Hamid and Khlifi for the conversations in their shop, Cécile, Frédéric Calmès, Mary, Isabelle and Hassan for their support, and to my dear friend Omar Chennafi for our conversations and adventures in the medina. David Amster, the director of the Arabic Language Institute in Fez, gave me his time and shared his knowledge of Fez and its architecture, which were most interesting and important to me. I also benefited from the help of members of various institutions: Mohammed Idrissi Janati, Abdelghani Tayyibi, Mohcine Idrissi, Kamal Raftani, Rachida Ben Guessous, Abdelbasset Fellous, Saïd Jabri and Rachid Alaoui. Finally, a special thought goes to Yürgen and Olivier, who died during the fieldwork. Justin McGuinness, Anton Escher, Jean-Louis Tornatore, Antoine Hennion, Nathalie Heinich, Damiana Otoiu, Cristina Golomoz, Maria Gravari-Barbas, Noël Salazar, Christoph
ii Brumann, Bertram Turner, Ioan-Mihai Popa, Fan Zhang, Pierpaolo De Giosa, Stefan Dorondel, Vivienne Marquart, Esther Horat, Simon Schlegel, and my colleagues at the University of Brussels, Nicole Grégoire, Maïté Maskens, Mathieur Hilgers, Joël Noret, Pierre Petit, Chiara Bortolotto, Annabel Vallard, Marie-Pierre Lissoir, Benjamin Rubbers, Mikaëla Le Meur, Laurent Legrain, Gina Aït Mehdi, Anne Laure-Cromphout and Lisa Richaud supported me with their advice, experiences, ideas and wisdom. I specially thank my colleagues for their help and advice during the seminars, workshops, lunches, days of work together and conversations in the hallways, as well as for the most enjoyable atmosphere they created on the 12 th floor of the Université Libre de Bruxelles’ Institut de Sociologie. It would be entirely unfair not to mention Irina Bussoli and Sandrine Levêque, the two successive secretaries at the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains. Their availability, experience and cheerful countenances made the administrative work and intricacies of academic life much more agreeable. My research would have been totally different without the comments, understanding, and presence of my three mentors in Brussels, namely David Berliner, Mathieu Hilgers and Jean-Louis Genard. I wish I could repay them in some other venue for all they brought me. Their patience, their encouragements, their knowledge, helped frame and direct my first tentative steps and my final writings. The mistakes and loose ends in the present dissertation are not due to any lack or neglect on the part of my mentors, but are entirely my own. Our meetings and conversations pointed out all the work I still had to carry out, but also the ways to define my own voice and to make my messy thought-processes clearer. I have no words to appropriately render thanks to my advisor, David Berliner who saved me on several occasions from getting "lost in theory." I particularly appreciate the rigor, clarity and accuracy of his intellect. I'm grateful for his readings, his reminders about the moral and theoretical issues at the core of this dissertation dealing with heritage, and for the windows of opportunity he opened to me in the academic world. Christoph Brumann, for his part, kindly welcomed and integrated me in his research group at the Max Planck Institute (Halle). The four months I spent there were highly interesting, intellectually stimulating and overall motivating. The good work conditions and the English speaking environment pushed me to write in English, a venture at once rich, risky and exhausting, especially in the non-English speaking LAMC where I continued and finished writing this. As a consequence, I wholeheartedly thank Jeremi Szaniawski and Kate Ashby for the proofreading of my dissertation. Charlotte Joy, Chiara Bortolotto, Nicole Grégoire, Maïté Maskens, Justin McGuinness, Christoph Brumann and David Berliner, as well as Mary Conway were more than useful and relevant in their
iii comments of my writings, be it on the level of a single chapter, or the entire dissertation. Time being one of the scarcest resource of any scholar, I really appreciate the amounts of this precious resource they gave to me. Even if I have never met them, I have to underline the influence of William James, John Dewey, Tim Ingold and Bruno Latour in shaping my thinking and intellectual processes. Their books formed my bedside table and filled my desk during my research. They also helped me finding energy to think of and write the dissertation in least pleasant times. My will – and stubbornness – to create a dialogue between them sometimes lead me to momentary enlightment that I had to temper later while they gave me unexpected energy.Also, the seminar "Attachement" at the École des Mines in Paris helped to familiarise myself with their ideas. Finally, aside from the academic world, I express my utmost respect and heartfelt thanks to my family and my friends. In one way or another, they participated to make these four years enjoyable, lively and full of surprises through dinners, parties, concerts and other enjoyable events we shared. I address a special thought to Alain Félix who, from privileged informant, has become my partner. I thank him for his support in hard times, and for his precious input in the shape of non-academic perspectives.
iv Table of content
1. Introduction 1 1.1.Theoretical appetizer 1 1.1.1. Anthropology, architecture and houses 1 1.1.1.1. General approaches 1 1.1.1.2. Houses as material elements 4 1.1.2. Anthropology and heritage 7 1.1.2.1.Constructivist approach of heritage 7 1.1.2.2.Daily life of heritage 10 1.2. Dissertation starter 14 1.2.1.What is this dissertation about 14 1.2.2. Methodology and epistemology 17 1.2.3.The choice of Fez 20
2. Fez 22 2.1.History of Fez 23 2.2.Inhabitants in the Fez medina 25 2.2.1. Presence of foreigners 27 2.3.Cultural heritage in Morocco 31 2.3.1. The Protectorate period (1912-1957) 32 2.3.2. UNESCO and the World Heritage nomination 36 2.3.3. UNESCO: a visible absence 42 2.3.4. Definitions of heritage 46 2.3.4.1. "Moroccans" and heritage 47 2.3.4.1.1. Tangible heritage 49 2.3.4.1.2. Intangible heritage 50 2.3.4.2. "Foreigners" and heritage 54 2.3.4.3. Members of institutions and heritage 59 2.4. Tourism in Morocco 64 2.4.1. Tourism in Fez 65
v 3. Six main informants 70 3.1. Jawad 71 3.2. Abdelhay 71 3.3. Fettah 72 3.4. Gigi 74 3.5. David 75 3.6. Hassan 76
4. How to engage with the materiality of houses? 78 4.1.A first glimpse at the houses in Fez 78 4.1.1.The Islamic city paradigm 79 4.1.2.North African houses 81 4.1.3.Houses in the Fez medina 88 4.1.3.1. Jawad's house 88 4.1.3.2. Ruth's house 93 4.2.Undertaking works in a house 98 4.2.1. Qualifications of the construction works 102 4.2.2. Values in the construction works 106 4.2.3. Institutions responsible for the construction works 109 4.2.4. Work permits 113 4.2.5. Bypassing the rules 116 4.2.5.1. Bribery 119 4.2.5.2. Legality and ruses 121 4.2.6. Construction works as a learning process 123 4.2.7. Conclusion 128 4.3.Furnishing and decorating a house 130 4.3.1. Styles 130 4.3.2. Principles of furnishing and decoration 137 4.3.3. Judgements and taste 143 4.3.3.1.Criteria of taste 143 4.3.3.2.Taste and distinction 145 4.4.Intimacy, hospitality and tradition in tourist accommodations 152 4.4.1. Why open a tourist accommodation? 152
vi 4.4.2. Intimacy and privacy 154 4.4.3. Hospitality 157 4.4.4. Tradition 159 4.5. Living with the house 167 4.6. Living in heritage 172 4.7. Conclusion 182
5. How to be attached to houses? 185 5.1.Introduction 185 5.2.Sensual relations with houses 186 5.2.1. Physical senses in Fez 186 5.2.2. Sensual perception, skills and reflexivity 191 5.3.Affective relation with houses 193 5.3.1. Affects in Fez 194 5.3.2. Heritage, affects and distinction 200 5.4.Experts and non-experts’ relations to houses 202 5.4.1. Experts, autodidact experts and non-experts in Fez 202 5.4.1.1. Experts 202 5.4.1.2. Autodidact experts 206 5.4.1.3.Non-experts 210 5.4.2. Expertise 211 5.5.Contentious relations with houses 217 5.5.1. Conflicts in Fez 217 5.5.2 Justifications 221 5.6.Qualification 227 5.6.1. Qualities of houses 228 5.6.2 . The heritage quality 237 5.6.3 Qualities and heritage 239 5.7. Attachment to heritage 241
6. Heritage as a fiction 247 6.1. Introduction 247 6.2. Various forms of heritage 249
vii 6.2.1. Heritage as an object to preserve 249 6.2.2. Heritage as a daily object 251 6.2.3. Heritage as an object of research 251 6.2.4. Heritage as a definition and a category 252 6.2.5. Legal heritage 254 6.2.6. Heritage as development tool 256 6.2.7. Heritage as a label 261 6.3. Heritage as a fiction 265 6.3.1. Relation to the past 266 6.3.2. Culture as a specific entity 267 6.3.3. Experts 269 6.3.4. Moral principles 269 6.4. Circulation and anchorage of the heritage fiction 271 6.4.1. Anchorage and localisation of heritage fiction 271 6.4.2 Circulation of the heritage fiction 273 6.4.3. Local and global 280
7. Conclusion 285
Bibliography 295 Glossary 311 Informants 316 Appendix 319 Abstract in French 396
viii Table of pictures
Picture 1. The heart of Fez medina with the Quaraouiyine mosque and the Moulay Idriss 22 shrine Picture 2. Bab Jdid, a new gate built in 2012. 39 Picture 3. Restoration of the city walls. 40 Picture 4. Billboard of the CIPA. 42 Picture 5. Buildings of the Banque du Maroc and the Central Post Office in the New 61 City. Picture 6. Abdelhay’s living room. 72 Picture 7. Swimming pool and inside garden in Fettah’s house. 73 Picture. 8. Gigi’s patio. 74 Picture 9. Ground-floor of David’s private house and wall he had redone in his street. 75 Picture 10. Mural fountain and Iraqi glass. Picture 11. Furniture in the visitor's room, early 20 th century 83 Picture 12. Geometrical pattern in mosaic, floral pattern in wood and carved plaster, 85 calligraphy in mosaic and carved plaster. 86 Picture. 13. Plastic sheet separating two parts of a floor. Picture 14. Jawad's patio. 87 Picture 15. Jawad's kitchen. 91 Picture 16. Jawad's bedroom. 92 Picture 17. Jawad's rooftop terrace. 92 Picture 18. Ruth's rooftop terrace. 93 Picture 19. Ruth's patio. 95 Picture 20. Ruth's bedroom (first-floor). 96 Picture 21. Ruth's kitchen (ground-floor). 96 Picture 22. Deteriorated column in Amina’s house. 97 Picture. 23. Works in a house. 98 Picture 24. Savage construction works. 101 Picture 25. Styles of furnishing and decoration. 117 Picture 26. Kitsch display cabinet in a Moroccan house. 131 Picture 27. Table in mosaic in a tourist accommodation. 136 Picture 28. Piece of clothe framed and hang on the wall in a tourist accommodation. 145 Picture 29. Furniture on the rooftop terrace in a guest house. 146 Picture 30. Two decorated metal or wood doors. 163 Picture 31. Ziyarates leaftlet 219 Picture 32. Logo "Smile you are in Fez" on a wall in Boujloud square. 257 261
Table of figures
Figure 1. Map of Fez medina (Fez el-Bali). 22 Figure 2. Architectural plan or a "typical" North African house (Gallotti, 1926: 72) 81 Figure 3. Secret Fès 262 Figure 4. Fez PDRT cover 263 Figure 5. Relations between UNESCO World Heritage bodies 284
ix Abstract
In the present dissertation, I aim to render explicit the actualisation (realization) of heritage, following this guiding question: how do human beings come to qualify a thing, be it tangible or intangible, as heritage? I argue that heritage is at the same time a quality allocated by human beings in their relation with things, and a fiction that circulates between, and anchors them in situation(s). To support this assertion, I focus on one element of official heritage, namely houses in the medina of Fez in Morocco, listed as part of the World Heritage since 1981. Firstly, I study medina houses in terms of networks, that is to say the various ways people engage with their materiality in everyday life. In this ethnographic report, I ask the question of how to inhabit houses located in a World Heritage site. This ethnography allows to question notions such as legality, taste, privacy, hospitality tradition or agency, and it brings to the fore the debate concerning the skills and ability of Moroccan inhabitants to take care of their house, as well as their obliviousness to the concept of heritage. I argue that houses have another story than the official heritage one, because they offer holds, affordances, to which human actors qualify. Heritage is one of these qualities. I then focus on heritage as a trajectory, in order to shed light on how houses cross the heritage border. I first introduce the category of self-taught experts, and then propose a wider definition of expertise, as an ability "to speak in the name of" someone or something else. I then underline the importance of senses and affects in the relation with houses and suggest that they are one possible component in heritage qualification, together with actions and justification. Finally, I argue that a notion preferable to that of heritage border , is that of attachment, which allows us to grasp the qualification of houses as heritage, in how it stresses both the similarities and the differences between houses and elements of heritage. Heritage as a quality results from a "surplus of attention" and relates to nostalgia or a feeling of threat, loss and disappearing; values related to purity, materiality and time; and actions of preservation and transmission. Finally, houses may be considered heritage through their qualification, but heritage also stands for something else than houses in Fez, such as a label or a justification for members of institutions in charge of tourism development or heritage preservation, a tool for sustainable development in the context of international projects, a definition assorted with specific criteria, an object to preserve for experts, an object of research in the field of social sciences, or a legal object. These are forms of heritage circulating between situations in which
x they are anchored and are actualised. Each form has its own characteristics, its own criteria of valuation, while all the forms share similarities that I define as the heritage fiction, namely a specific relation to the past, the idea of culture as a specific entity, the importance of experts, and moral principles. Finally, I take the circulation and the anchorage of the heritage fiction and its forms to think of the local and the global as qualities, instead of scales or levels.
xi
" ‘Bad poets borrow,’ T.S. Eliot has said, ‘good poets steal.’. I have tried in what follows to be, in this respect anyway, a good poet, and to take what I have needed from certain others and make it shamelessly my own. But such thievery is in great part general and undefined, an almost unconscious process of selection, absorption, and reworking, so that after awhile one no longer quite knows where one’s argument comes from, how much of it is his and how much is others’. One only knows, and that incompletely, what the major intellectual influences upon his work have been, but to attach specific names to specific passages is arbitrary or libelous." Geertz (1971: v)
"Why do we acknowledge only our textual sources but not the ground we talk, the ever-changing skies, mountains, rocks and trees, the houses we inhabit and the tools we use not to mention the innumerable companions, both non-human animals and fellow humans, with which and with whom we share our lives? " Ingold (2011: xii)
xii 1. Introduction
"[T]he convention according to which anthropology is committed to observing and describing life as we find it, but not to changing it, whereas art and architecture are at liberty to propose forms never before encountered, without having first to observe and describe what is already there, is unsustainable. The truth is that the proposition of art and architecture, to the extent that they carry force, must be grounded in a profound understanding of the lived world, and conversely that anthropological accounts of the manifold ways in which life is lived would be of no avail if they were no brought to bear on speculative inquiries into what the possibilities for human life might be. Thus art, architecture and anthropology have in common that they observe, describe and propose." Ingold (2011: xi)
1.1. Theoretical appetizer
In this dissertation, I describe and I make explicit how inhabitants of a specific World Heritage site live in their house, how they qualify or not their house as heritage, and what are the various forms of heritage in this World Heritage site. Houses and heritage then constitute the two flag topic. Both have kept scholars busy for long in anthropology and in human sciences more generally. It would then be nonsense not to start with the theoretical background of my argument. After a general overview of each topic, I present more specific approaches I took basis on for my research, such as the materiality of houses or the daily life of heritage. I nonetheless take distance from that theoretical background to set my own one when I introduce my investigation in the second part of this introduction.
1.1.1. Anthropology, architecture and houses
1.1.1.1. General approaches
Architecture and buildings have long been assumed to receive little interest in anthropology (Humphrey, 1988). After the pioneer works of the Chicago School about urbanism and urban ecology in the early 20 th century, scholars developed an interest in architecture and space in the 1960s. Carsten and Hugh Jones (1995) explain this late development by the interest of architects in
1 material aspects of houses rather than in social ones, and by the interest anthropologists in households – they investigate kinship systems, economy and political organisation – more than in houses. For instance, anthropologists included the physical description of houses as a part – and not a main topic – of their monographs, with for instance Boas’ study of Kwakiult houses, or Malinowski’s description of the yam house in the Trobriand. Lévi Strauss went further and studied kinship in cognatic societies through the notion of " sociétés à maison " (house societies) as a transitional form of social organisation between kin based societies and class based societies. In this view, a house is a social group, a subdivision of a tribe characterised by continuity in time. Since the 1960s, vernacular architecture is a key topic for anthropologists concerned with culture and cultural change (Rapoport, 1969). Paul Lévy and Segaud (1983) show interest in the few architectural invariants – to inhabit, to base, to distribute, to transform – which configure space while they produce diversity according to the cultural context they take shape in. Schefold, Nas and Domenig (2003) investigate the diachronic changes in the physical and aesthetic appearance, in the functions and in the uses of houses in Southeast Asian societies. Tonna (1990) differentiates Muslim and classical European architectures. For instance, the latter favors column and entablature and tends to the promotion of identities, while Muslim architecture gives emphasis to the arch and the wall and promotes similarity. Aside from this cultural study of houses and architecture, many other approaches flourished, such as the structuralist or symbolic one. Bourdieu (1970: 89) connects the house with the conception of the world in Berber societies, for the house is "the principle locus for the objectification of generative schemes." In a similar vein, Baduel (1986: 4) argues that, in North Africa, a "house is the projection on the ground of the values of the group." In Morocco, Eickelman (1980) shows how the perceptions and uses of urban and domestic spaces reflect the cultural values and the implicit conceptions of social order. In his view, the symbolic aspect of urban and domestic forms links to culturally shared conceptions of individual and social identity and expresses the cultural and symbolic characteristics of a social group. More interested in the operative aspect of houses, scholars within the functionalist approach stress the relationships between buildings and socio economic practices. They argue that practical considerations, such as politics or economy, determine the shape, the sitting and the signification of buildings. Following the utilitarian philosopher Bentham, Foucault (1995) makes of the panopticon an abstract model of a disciplinary society. The Familistère de Guise , a phalanstery built by Godin in 1880, follows the idea of architecture as a remedy for social problems. Stierlin (2003) for his part points out the articulation between Islamic architecture, politics and faith. In the 1960s, Hassan Fathy, an Egyptian architect, proposed a radically new architecture built for and with the people. He
2 narrates the experiment of Gourna village in his book, Gourna, A Tale of Two Villages (Fathy, 1969), and how he initiated a rupture with past traditional techniques while still using them. More recently, the post structuralist trend focuses on the relation between politics and architecture (Buchli, 2000). For instance, Fehérvàry (2002) relates changes in the political context of the post communist Hungary with changes in the furnishing of houses. After 1989, American kitchen and luxury bathrooms became normal standards of a new way of life imitating the West and materialised the values of an anti socialist society. This desire to possess things from the West testifies an identity adjustment in the context of a political change. Feminist scholars on their hand underline the oppressive structure of patriarchy in the order of the house (Ardener, 1993). In the philological field, language constitutes a way to investigate houses and dwelling. Berque (2010) approaches dwelling in China and Japan thought the etymology of words and the study of poems related to dwelling. Several other scholars also focus on the meaning of the word "dwelling" and the verb "to inhabit". Heidegger (1958) starts from the verb "bauen " (to build) to think of the verb "wohnen " (to inhabit). According to him, dwelling is the essential characteristic of the human condition for the habitation oversteps the accommodation to signify the stay of mortals on earth, their movement along a way of life. When they inhabit, human beings accomplish themselves as mortals and realise themselves as part of the original Unity – or Quadriparti – gathering mortals, the earth, the sky and the divine. To reach this state, human beings have to build, to put themselves in security, to preserve the original Unity by giving it a space where to gather the four components, that is to say a dwelling. However, following Ingold (2011), I chose the term "inhabiting" – and not "dwelling" – to refer to the engagement of human beings with their environment throughout their life – for practical reasons I nonetheless reduce this environment to the Fez medina and its houses. Bachelard (1964 [1957]) further develops the idea of ontological security through the dwelling. In a phenomenological approach, he proposes a topo analysis of the intimate being on the base of images of the house. In his view, houses constitute a space defended against adverse forces, a beloved space, a protective space to which inhabitants link images. Doing so, Bachelard (id.) aims to investigate human creativeness and imagination in the context of a phenomenology of poetic imagination, to link "poetic images to an archetype lying dormant in the depths of the unconscious" (Bachelard, id.: xvi). Serfaty Garzon (2003) extends this psychological perspective and focuses on the feeling of being at home and on the notion of appropriation. Studies of appropriation are also inscribed in a semiotic approach that takes the house as a model of expression of the self and of ideologies, and furniture as social or mythological emblems. Following Vleben’s path, Kenneth (1999) analyses hall furnishing to uncover social, cultural and
3 psychological meanings beyond their utilitarian function. He makes of the form of Victorian halls and of their furnishing a guide in the moves of inhabitants in the house and a mark of social distinction and social standing. De Certeau (1984) explicitly turns the house into a text – idea that Keane (1995) criticises by putting stress on the practices and on the authority of the speaker as shaping the representations of the cultural meaning of houses. De Certeau (id.) particularly focuses on the tricks, strategies and ruses of inhabitants in their life in and with the house. In Fez, Newcomb (2006, 2010) investigates the everyday practices of women in the New City. In cafés and cyber clubs, women develop tactics to make their presence in public social spaces acceptable by extending traditional principles of behaviour, such as shame – concept socially significant enough for Fassi to be invoked and understood. By their occupation and use of particular spaces, women appropriate, resist, or manipulate their identity, role and social status. In addition to their importance in the semiotic approach, appropriation and resistance are core notions of the constructivist or interactionist theory. Scholars then investigate the domestic space, the ways inhabitants construct space in order to organise their life and to build their identity (Collignon, 2001; Collignon and Staszak, 2003). Others study the limits and definition of the private space (Zeneidi Henry, 2003). In Morocco, Navez Bouchanine (1991, 1994, 1997) focuses on the appropriation of space and houses by Moroccan inhabitants and sheds light on the "dwellers' competence," that is to say the practices, strategies and appropriations by which inhabitants reach a certain degree of satisfaction in their accommodation. These approaches compose the general framework though which houses have mostly been investigated. To some extend, they set the stage and some of them are found in the following of this dissertation as a support for reflexion. I however chose another lens to start the study of houses in a World Heritage site, namely the materiality of houses, because inhabitants obviously, daily and sometimes blindingly, relate to it.
1.1.1.2. Houses as material elements
After art historians and archaeologists, social science scholars have developed a particular interest in material culture studies, 1 and some of them focus on homes, houses and furnishing.
1 Techniques, their efficacy and their listing constitute a first trend in the study of materiality, with Mauss (1973) studying the techniques of the body, Leroi Gourhan (1943, 1945) focusing on the efficacy of technical gestures and Lemonnier (2004) investigating operational sequences. Aside from this school of cultural technology, anchored around the journal Techniques et Culture , other French scholars of the team "Matière à penser" lay stress on incorporation and embodiment. After Shilder, Warnier (1999) defines the notion of bodily synthesis as a malleable pattern through which the body incorporates and embodies objects into its image. Human beings integrate objects to their bodily space and extend their bodily space to objects. As such, objects become a prosthesis and an extension of the body. The English school of the University College London (UCL) developed an approach in terms of materiality and
4 According to Miller (2001: 3), houses are "the single most important site for material culture studies," for they provide an insight into societies. In Miller’s view, houses constitute a central place in the development and the reproduction of social relations. For instance, the investigation of inhabitants who live in council estate and change their kitchen furniture is a way to study the gendered or (inter)generational relations (Miller and Clarke, 1999). Other scholars argue that living somewhere does not mean feeling at home. Inhabitants then have to appropriate their dwelling through a physical engagement. Julien (1999) and Rosselin (1999) particularly focus on embodiment. Based on a case study on single room accommodations, Rosselin (id.) defines embodiment as an essential modality of everyday life, as a game between the structuring aspect of materials and the imposition of a bodily will, as the definition of a good distance between the self and objects. Though this appropriation, objects become evident in their use and their presence, and human actors can even find difficulties to talk about them. Miller (2005) names this latter characteristic the "humility of things," which means that "objects are important not because they are evident and physically constrain or enable, but often precisely because we don’t ‘see’ them. The less we are aware of them, the more powerfully they can determinate our expectations by setting the scene and ensuring normative behaviours without being open to challenge" (Miller, id.: 5). In that context, Meskell (2005) investigates the power of materiality thought the monumental remnants of Egypt. In the past, this monumentality – pyramids, statues – served to control nature and society through their massive and affective presence. Rowlands (2005) for his part focuses on the relativity of materiality, stressing some things are more material than others according to the process of materialisation they are engaged in. Verkaak (2012) studies this process of materialisation – or objectification (Miller, 2005) – with the design and the construction of mosques in European countries. He argues that their construction goes beyond a simple political or religious process of claiming one’s identity or respecting religious principles. Each mosque follows its own trajectory, of which Verkaak (id.) stresses the power and affects.
objectification and promoted the mutual self construction of things and persons. In their view, material culture tells more about the relation between individuals and groups than their direct observation and investigation, about the fantasised image of the other that acts like mirrors. Objectification, a main concept in the British approach, means that what human beings create has the potential to appear and to become alien, to have its own interest and trajectory (Miller, 2005). Ingold (2007b) however insists on materials over materiality. Rather than the materiality of objects, which human beings cannot touch, Ingold suggests investigating the properties of materials. Rather than material culture or material world, Ingold proposes to investigate the environment and the engagement with materials. According to him, studies in material culture, busy with semiotics, cognition or praxeology, forget tangible stuff. They propose abstract analysis of already made things. Based on Gibson’s definition of the environment as a mix of media – which afford movement and perception, substances – materials, and surfaces – interface between the two latter, he distinguished the properties of materials from the qualities allocated by human beings.
5 This focus on materiality, and more particularly the notion of objectification, connects with the agency of things. Scholars dealing with agency assert that both objects and humans have abilities, competences, and skills. On the object side of agency, Appadurai (1986) addresses the interactions between human actors and the material world with the notion of "social life of things." The existence of people is responsible for the creation of objects and objects are responsible for the creation of the particularities of human existence. Miller (2001) goes a step further by asserting that the materiality of houses has consequences, such as a feeling of alienation. These consequences result from the precise materiality of houses and are not an expression of human agency. He (id.: 20) defines the house agency as "how far people are thwarted by the prior presence of their house and the orders of their material culture." This agency comes from their history and the former presence of material culture that the inhabitants have to appropriate or to resist to. Keane (1997; 2005) rather investigates the historical and social power of objects on the basis of Pierce’s pragmatist notions of iconicity 2 and indexicality. 3 He invites to treat objects in their own right, to look at the habits, competences and constraints objects make possible. His model gives importance to contingency, causality and openness to possible futures. Scholars inscribed in the ANT (Actor Network Theory) on their hand extend the role of objects and artefacts out of the simple technical field to give them a major role in innovations and science making (Latour, 1987). Fighting against the divide between Nature and Culture, they claim objects are not passive tools, or extensions of the body, or general explanations situated in the Material or the Natural field, or symbols conveying a meaning. On the contrary, objects act, play a role in a situation for, at least, their materiality allows the situation to last in time and to extend in space. These scholars, such as, Venkatesan (2009), investigate objects and technical devices to which human beings delegate functions, which they call "mediators." However, rather than objects in themselves, these scholars focus on the networks of actors in which objects are involved. Ingold (2007b, 2011) on his hand follows a processual approach of materials. 4 He argues that the capacity of an object to act comes from its inclusion in flows and fluxes of the life world. The flux of materials permanently generates and dissolves the form and shape of things. In that view, the properties of materials are not fixed attributes but are processual and relational. Ingold (id.) then criticises the conceptions of agency as a capacity to act back and to
2 Iconicity is a matter of potential. The realisation of a thing as an icon does not lay in the thing but in the social processes such as values or authority relations. 3 Indexicality is a matter of inference. The realisation of a thing as an index relies in cognitive processes and historical conceptions. 4 In his view, scholars have to switch their attention from materiality to the flux and transformations of materials, to the relations between substances (all kind of more or less solid stuff), media (what affords movement and perception such as air) and surfaces (interface between a medium and a surface). He also asserts that it is impossible to define the material world because it a priori separates the mind and the body. This distinction involves the introduction – that Ingold refuses – of hybrids (between the mind and the body, between Nature and Culture).
6 induce actions human beings otherwise might not do, as an additional ingredient that must be attributed to things for them to act back. According to him, materials are hives of activity for the active engagement they necessarily involve. On the subject side of agency, Gell (1994) defines agency as "the capacity to initiate causal events in his/her vicinity, which cannot be ascribed to the current state of the physical cosmos, but only to a special category of mental states; that is, intentions" (Gell, id.: 19). Human agents make causal inference about the intentions, capabilities and social agency of other agents. In this view, things are secondary agents, endowed with agency by the articulation of fragments of primary intentional agents. Gell (id.) then looks after agency behind the world of artefacts. Jansen (2013) also stresses the primacy of human beings over things in the investigation of agency. However, rather than on intentionality, he focuses on the accountability of things and persons in their capacity to act and argues things cannot act without human practices. Rather than choosing between de reification – a person centred approach – and de purification – a thing centred approach – in the study of agency, Jansen (id.) proposes to study the ways objects materialise borders and the human practices giving birth to the objects’ agency. The objectification of houses, their appropriation by inhabitants, their materiality and their agency are at the core of the fourth section of this dissertation. On the one hand, I describe how these characteristics take shape in my specific case study and, on the other, I briefly discuss the theoretical issues related to the agency of objects in their relations with human actors.
1.1.2. Anthropology and heritage
Since the late 1980s, heritage has become a subject of research and an academic discipline within social and human sciences. It has also been the subject of many academic courses, the topic of numerous books and articles, the thematic of several journals – such as the International Journal of Heritage Studies – and even the core of research groups – the Association of Critical Heritage Studies in one of them. In the following, I review the various interests scholars have shown in studying heritage, and more particularly the constructivist approach, and its daily life. I also make clear which approaches I base my argument on and which I take distance from.
1.1.2.1. Constructivist approach of heritage
The constructivist approach is based on discursive and political statements about the making and the use of heritage. It dates back to the 1980s when British scholars asserted that heritage is a
7 secular religion in modern societies characterised by time space compression and experiences of rootlessness and rupture (Lowenthal, 1998). In a more post modernist stance, heritage becomes an empty signifier characterised by inauthenticity, fake, simulacra, and disneyfication, that is to say the postmodern face of musealisation. The contemporary scholars of the critical heritage studies movement even argue that "there is really no such thing as heritage" (Smith, 2006: 11). In this view, heritage is an interpretation of past events open to appropriation. Rather than in the materiality of heritage or its intrinsic values, scholars are interested in uncovering the experts’ process of value giving and in taken for granted processes around heritage making. Taken in its political aspect, heritage constitutes a powerful resource for creating a present and a future. It also relates to claims about identity, ancestry, transmission and moral issues. Finally, scholars in postcolonial studies insist on heritage as a political site of contestation because it is open to multiple appropriations. Some scholars speak of its multivocality (Owens, 2002) or of heritage as a hybrid or a creolised production (Long, 2000). Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) particularly focus on the dissonance of heritage, that is to say the multiple values of heritage. This dissonance is inherent to heritage because this latter consists in an open interpretation. In this constructivist approach, scholars firstly investigate the local initiatives and the system of heritage making by the State or experts (Dubost, 1994), the expert and the non expert relation to heritage (Heinich, 2009), the social uses of heritage (Babadzan, 2001), heritagisation in a top/down or in a bottom/up process 5 (Chevallier, 2003; Rautenberg, 2003; Morisset, 2009), the processes of negotiation around the various interpretations of heritage (Fontein, 2006) and the promotion or resistance to the dominant ideologies (Collins, 2008). In North Africa, Boumaza (2003) defends the idea that heritage is a way for countries to overtake the failures of decolonisation. In his view, heritage is a tool to reorder the State ideology and to spread Islam, Arabity and Berberity. In France, Amiotte Suchet and Floux (2002) investigate how eco museums erect regional typical houses. In that context, the typical is an a priori category imposed by the museum institution and heritagisation consists in changing the status of the material element through a range of translations and procedures which results in the convergence of discourses about the museified house. The construction of the past is another topic in many constructivist researches about heritage. An historical approach narrates the rise of heritage – such as Babelon and Chastel (1995) did for France and Harvey (2008) for Great Britain. In this view, the past is dead and the development of heritage is inscribed in a myth of return and redemption motivated by nostalgia for
5 Tornatore (2001) proposes the distinction between politicisation and crystallisation to make account of these two kinds of heritage. The former, carried by institutions, have visibility and power in the public sphere, while the latter results from civil initiatives. Official heritage is then a set of memories gathered in a unique repertoire that erases the lived experience and establishes it in knowledge.
8 a Golden Age and imagined homelands. In a more memorial approach, scholars investigate alternative and parallel heritages to the dominant heritage, the various ways to present the past – recollection, commemoration, "authentic" reconstruction – and non Western expressions of memory, transmission and heritage. Their interests gravitate around politics of return (Rowlands, 2002) and memory work (Ricoeur, 2004). Constructivist scholars are also concerned with values of heritage. Heinich (2009) draws an axiology of heritage in her study of expert heritage making at the General Inventory of Cultural Heritage in France. She looks at the construction of a collective look amidst members of this institution, at the criteria and procedures of selection. She concludes that authenticity is the authoritative value in heritage making. Authenticity is also of prime importance in Morisset's (2009) investigation of heritage in Quebec. According to her, authenticity characterises the real, the truth, and establishes a balance between time (history), space (places) and Others (distinction). She claims that in Quebec, there has been a passage between two regimes of authenticity, between heritage as a monument and heritage as a relic, between a present and a past time, between a "Quebec friendly space" and a hostile other. Dubost (1994) for her part argues that the value of scarcity turned garden plants in a new kind of heritage. She stresses the prime role of amateurs, collectors and associations in the promotion of "scarce plants," which are their objects of passion, collection, and transmission. Dubost (id.) opposes the values of scarcity in the making of heritage, and the economic value in its promotion. More than a value, Smith (2006) defines heritage as a cultural practice "involved in the construction and regulation of a range of values and understandings" (Smith, id.: 11). As such, heritage needs a material reality to appear and to be experienced as it involves performances of remembering. Heritage is vital and alive, is a moment of action and creates emotions. But heritage is first and foremost a discourse, that is to say a kind of social practice composed by human practices and performances of heritage. Smith (id.) particularly focuses on the materialisation of the "authorized heritage discourse," that is to say the Western dominant discourse about heritage. This dominant discourse is based on beliefs about the nature and the meaning of heritage – material buildings reflecting the nation – and on expert knowledge and values. Also, this discourse refers to the past as singular and concrete, to the innate values of heritage and to its passivity. Smith (id.) also asserts that UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) are the authorising institutions of heritage and spread the dominant discourse. Several scholars focus on UNESCO politics and values of heritage. Bortolotto (2009) concludes that there is a gap between the legal property defined in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
9 and the symbolic property of the listed heritage on the field. In a more political approach, Turtinen (2000) defines UNESCO as a global grammar ordering the world. Lyons (1978), Maswood (2000) and Maurel (2009) investigate its efficiency and politicisation. Smeets (2004) and Rössler (2006) scrutinise the definitions of heritage within this institution while others focus on the values such as authenticity (Cameron, 2008), the outstanding universal value (Pocock, 1997) or culture (Nielsen, 2011). Finally, some scholars are interested in the inside functioning of UNESCO (Brumann, 2009a; 2011; Nielsen, id.).
In this dissertation, I adopt a constructivist approach, but, contrary to Smith (2006), I argue, that there is such thing as heritage and this dissertation offers examples to support my argument. Also, similarly to constructivist scholars, I'm interested in heritage making. However, I take distance from them in two ways. Firstly, rather than studying the construction of the past through heritage, I define heritage as one kind of the presence of the past in the present, as memory 6 and history are. As a consequence, rather than studying the various ways to be in relation with the past, I focus on the various ways to actualise heritage, the relation with the past being one component of this actualisation. Secondly, rather than values of heritage – which I find too abstract to some extend –, I scrutinise the qualities that inhabitants allocated their houses and the daily practices and experiences of houses as heritage.
1.1.2.2. Daily life of heritage
The first investigations about the daily life of heritage focused on the democratisation of and through heritage, with for instance visitor surveys (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1989). Glevarec and Saez (2002) study associations involved in actions around heritage to understand the taste for heritage in France. Wallace (2006) investigates volunteers working for the preservation of heritage while Holmes (2006) inquires volunteers working as museum guides. Aside from this democratic access and the democratic opportunities offered by heritage, scholars focus on its daily life and its appropriation. Veschambre (2008) is interested in the symbolic – rather than in the material – appropriation of space, that is to say the production and uses of symbols that have a social and political efficiency.
6 Berliner (2005) warns against the "abuses of memory" and the dangers of its overextension as a concept. In his view, the memory blossoming in the humanities may lead to the entanglement of memory and identity or culture. I assert that identity is one instrumentalisation of memory (identity issues refer to memory as one tool in their claims) and culture one of its component. "Memory " is one way for "the past" to be present in "the present" and I explain the difference between heritage, memory and history as presences of the past in the present (cf. p. 266).
10 This process of appropriation links to the heritagisation and the demolition of marks and traces. 7 Rather than marks, traces are involved in the production of heritage, which results from the recognition of signs by specific social groups. Heritage making consists in turning a trace into an identity mark and to appropriate it as a resource. Once appropriated, heritage allows identification – and then consists in a social capital – promotion – and then consists in an economic capital – and legitimisation – and then consists in a symbolic capital. Aside from appropriation, scholars investigate the daily relation with heritage – which is also of my interest in this dissertation – and more particularly the ways to inhabit heritage, to live in and with heritage (Gavari Barbas, 2005; Fabre and Iuso, 2009). To inhabit has to be understood in a wide meaning, as it involves a relation with time – a long term relation – and space – an affective relation. Gravari Barbas (id.) asserts that humans have always adapted buildings and monuments to their changing uses. However, the recent heritage inflation extended heritage to daily and ordinary practices and buildings. Some of them prove to be difficult to inhabit and their new function, essential to their survival, raise several questions. Gravari Barbas (id.) underlines four of them. The first concerns the meaning of inhabiting a heritage neighbourhood. Scholars then overview the constraints – be they administrative or economic – of inhabiting such a place, the memories of that place, the dialectic of possession and deprivation experienced by inhabitants. Ortar (2005) points out two main constraints of living in heritage in the French countryside: legal rules and the choice of a balance between authenticity and modernity during the restoration works – or in other words the adaptation of the house to the contemporary life. Building permits restrict the desires of owners and these latter have to play with legality to preserve their freedom. Owners also have to choose which elements of the past to keep and which degree of comfort and modernity to bring. Living in heritage involves the choice of a way of life and of a relation with history, the renunciation of some elements of comfort to respect the structure and the materials – as this work will show either in the fourth part. Gravari Barbas (id.) presents a second question, that of the relations between members of heritage institutions and inhabitants and of the relations between heritage, social and housing policies. Gravari Barbas (id.) also proposes an investigation of otherness, cohabitation and tourism through the third question dedicated to the relations between residents and transit populations. In this view, Bock Digne (2005) studies the relation between welcoming and inhabiting in old Oman Houses in Zanzibar. Cinotti (2009) even proposes a tool to measure the perceived hospitality in guest houses and Di Domenico and Lynch (2007) focus on identity and on the economic aspect of
7 Marks and traces are two modes of marking, of producing signs, of materialising a presence and an identity in time and space. While marks relate to the present, are signatures and result from an intentional act, traces come from the past and an intentional act. Traces mainly consist in ruins, remnants and heritage.
11 "homes enterprises." Finally, Gravari Barbas (id.) investigates the ways to inhabit strange heritage such as former places of industrial production. Coquery (1998) reports on the transformation of aristocratic private hotels in public places of the State administration after the French Revolution in 1789. She stresses the changes in occupants and in functions and sheds light on the inscription of these changes in the furniture and the symbolic associated to the building. Fabre (2009: 21, my translation) on his hand focuses on non intentional monuments and the "diverse, changing and unpredictable reality of 'people,' of contemporary human beings who live in the monument or in its closest proximity." He concludes that contrary to monuments that serve to narrate History, heritage provides a physical experience of the past. In that view, he defines three ways of inhabiting in and with heritage. " Assimilation " (familiarisation) consists in using the monument as the frame of a ritual, as a familiar cockpit welcoming exceptional experiences. Inhabitants then wander across the element of heritage, climb on it to dominate it, represent and figure it, and write on it. " Occupation " (takeover) is a second way of being in relation with inhabited heritage. It is the physical or symbolic occupation of an element of heritage, characteristic of the conflicts around restitutions and the claims of the first settler. Finally, " résidence " (staying) includes the presence and the words of inhabitants – which I mainly consider throughout this dissertation while I question the familiarisation with elements of heritage as an explanation to the blindness of inhabitants to their heritage. Interested in the daily life of houses as heritage, Brumann (2009b) shows that instead of freezing houses, inhabitants try to do something original with them, such as using them in a commercial purpose. More generally, Brumann (id.) invites for a comparison of historic town centres in their conversion to modern tastes and functions and in the balance between state involvement and private initiatives. Finally, emotions and affects related to heritage constitute a relatively new field in the study of heritage. Instead of heritage making institutions, scholars focus on the local and banal relations with heritage. Involvement is the master word of these researches. Human actors are involved in associations and institutions and construct exemplary object through processes of symbolic recognition, social appropriation, and collective promotion of this object. On the one hand, emotions may distinguish experts and non experts in the way they engage with heritage. Experts engage in a regime of critique – they mix distance and engagement through the professionalisation of their practice – non experts rather engage in an emotional regime (Heinich, 2009). On the other hand, Fabre (2002) tries to gather experts and non experts around emotions. In his view, patrimonial emotions are the contemporary expression of a new popular sensibility to the past, and expertise is one spring to understand them. Emotions relate on the one hand with an expert appropriation of heritage leading to its political instrumentation, and on the other hand with a popular consumption
12 of heritage weaving the local memory. Finally, scholars such as Dassié (2006) or Barbe and Tornatore (2006) investigate the heritage emotions linked to a disaster – storm, fire – that threatens or destroys an element of heritage. Dassié (id.) particularly stresses the integration of the emotions linked to the disaster to the personal emotions of individuals as a necessary step for these latter to act in favour of heritage. She coins this process "intimisation " ("intimisation").
13 1.2. Dissertation starter
After these patchy clues about my theoretical stance and my empirical work, it is time and place to introduce them clearly.
1.2.1. What is this dissertation about?
With some conceit, which I reduce in the following, I aim to make explicit and to grasp the actualisation – realisation – of heritage, following this orienting question: how do human beings come to qualify a thing, be it tangible or intangible, as heritage? I argue that heritage is a quality allocated by humans in their relation with things. According to the economist theory, a thing is allocated a value or a quality after it entered into the market, an economy, or at least a system of exchange in which criteria define its values and qualities. Such an approach often results in the listing of several markets. In the case of heritage, one could list a symbolic market in which heritage is an identity tool, a political market in which heritage is instrumentalised, an economic market in which tourism and development are based on heritage, and a social market in which heritage is at the basis of claims for social justice. This multiplicity of markets shows that heritage is a boundary object 8 (Tornatore, 2000). Rather than listing these markets and their characteristics, I focus on one element of official heritage, namely houses in the medina of Fez in Morocco, a World Heritage site listed in 1981. The matter of their qualification as heritage raises two related questions, that is to say their daily life and materiality, and the other forms of heritage they are in relation with. As a consequence, on the one hand, I follow medina houses in terms of networks, that is to say the various ways to engage with their materiality in the everyday life. On the other hand, I focus on heritage as a trajectory to shed light on how house cross the "heritage boundary", on how human beings draw it, and on the various forms of heritage. In a first time, I describe the main place where the field investigation took place, namely the medina of Fez in Morocco. I present the history of the medina and I particularly focus on three major transformations that have taken place since the mid 1950s. First of all, the population of the medina changed. The elites left the medina after the Independence of Morocco in 1957 and moved to the New City, Casablanca – the economic centre – or Rabat – the political centre. Rural migrants have replaced them and have rented or occupied for free their houses. This population change resulted in what some authorities and scholars name the "ruralisation" of the medina, which they
8 Boundary objects are "objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites" (Star and Griesemer, 1989: 393).
14 consider as the main reason of its material degradation. Also, since the late 1990s, foreigners have bought houses in the medina. They have settled in their secondary residence or have opened a tourist accommodation. The heritagisation of the medina constitutes the second change. I overview the various politics of heritage that took place before the arrival of UNESCO in the late 1970s and I present the actions and programmes related to the World Heritage listing. I also describe how UNESCO looks like in Fez and the various definitions of heritage I met in Fez. I then focus on the third transformation, tourism development in Fez, and in Morocco more generally. In a second time, following Miller's (2001) idea of physical engagement with houses, I focus on the various ways to engage with this material element , on the networks crossing in houses. I describe what circulates, meets and passes by houses, all the relations, components and flux composing the networks. In this ethnographic report, I address how to inhabit houses located in a World Heritage site and what is their daily life. To answer this question, I start with the presentation of North Africa houses in the academic literature and in Fez. Following Raymond (1994), I support the idea that these written reports tend to freeze houses in a specific and unique model, that of the North Africa house with patio, and to associate them with particular features such as a game between openness and closeness, privacy or hospitality. Doing so, scholars do not take into account the diversity in architectural forms, which I sketch on the basis of two medina houses. I then depict the construction works that inhabitants undertake and the furnishing and decorative trends they follow once they have acquired a house, a room or a floor in a house. I question the notions of legality, tricks and taste. I also focus on houses dedicated to tourism, that is to say guest houses and home stays in Moroccan families. Rather than an industry characterised by fake, heritage tourism first and foremost brings daily problems and issues such as privacy, hospitality and tradition, which owners and tourists have to face and negotiate. I then turn to the daily life of and with houses and on the consequences of their materiality. I examine what the house makes do to inhabitants and how houses and inhabitants act together. Writing books and blogs, expressing one’s creativity and imagination, starting a new life or having a specific way of life are among the actions inhabitant attribute to their house. Finally, I take as basis an oft heard assertion in the mouth of Moroccan and foreign elites denying any heritage skills to Moroccan inhabitants – they are accused of not being educated to heritage, of having no taste, of leaving houses falling down – to think of the blindness and the lack on interest in houses as heritage. By investigating how people live in and with houses, I faced a surprise. Inhabitants do not especially consider houses, and even the medina, as heritage. Houses have another story that one of official heritage. They are first and foremost a place to live and are at best a familial legacy or an economic heritage when the house is a tourist accommodation. Some foreign residents see their
15 house and the medina as a personal heritage (that is to say a "plus" in their life), an economic heritage that worth and/or brings money, or a cultural heritage for its location in a World Heritage site or for its architectural or historical uniqueness. The qualification of houses as heritage is however obvious for experts, that is to say members of institutions in charge of the medina. I then investigate the qualification of houses as heritage in order to grasp the heritage border, that is to say how and according to what houses enter the territory of heritage. I focus on several ways to be in relation with the house, none of them being exclusive but all of them combining and mixing – their split is a descriptive trick for a better clarity. Houses are first and foremost a place of sensual relations – inhabitants touch them, see them, smell them – and some inhabitants even consider these senses as skills. Affects constitute a second kind of relation with houses as Gravari Barbas (2005) suggests. Inhabitants are in love with their house, feel good in their house or, on the contrary, feel sadness and disappointment. They also remember souvenirs and evoke nostalgic moments. Scholars and inhabitants distinguish between expert and non expert relations with houses. I challenge the expert approach of heritage by adding the category of autodidact experts – after Dubost (1994) underlined the importance of amateurs in heritage making. I also propose a wider definition of expertise as an ability "to speak in the name of" (Tornatore, 2010). Inhabitants also relate to houses in terms of conflicts, from the choice of a decorative pattern or a furnishing element to the debates between members of institutions. These conflicts highlight the justifications inhabitants refer to in their actions and discourses. Finally, inhabitants allocate qualities to their house, among which is the heritage quality. Arising from the descriptions of the relations with houses, I argue that better than the notion of heritage border , the notion of attachment (Hennion, 2007) allows grasping how inhabitants come to qualify their house as heritage. This notion better sheds light on the actualisation of heritage for it gives room to both human and non human actors and to the mutual attention they give and take – human being give attention to an object and an attention is taken by the object. Secondly, this notion shows the importance of senses and affects in the relation with houses. Contrary to researches focused on the expert heritage making (Heinich, 2009), I suggest that senses and affects are one possible component in the qualification of a thing as heritage (Barbe and Tornatore, 2006; Dassié, 2006) together with actions and justification. Finally, the notion of attachment stresses both the similarities between houses and elements of heritage – they share affects, senses, conflicts, qualities – and shows that the house as home does not exclude the house as heritage. The qualities of home and heritage are however different as heritage results from a "plus of attention" and relates to nostalgia or a feeling of threat, loss and disappearing; values related to purity, materiality and time; and actions of preservation and transmission.
16 Houses may be heritage through their qualification, but heritage is also something else than houses in Fez, such as a label or a justification for members of institution in charge of tourism development or heritage preservation, a tool for sustainable development in the context of international projects, a definition assorted with criteria, an object to preserve for experts, an object of research in the field of social sciences, or a legal object. In a last time, I consider the forms of heritage encountered in Fez and I address their circulation between situations in which they anchor and are actualised. Following Latour (2012), I define a form as something that lasts in time and remains through its transformation and circulations – through the media for instance – and anchors – by qualification or by translation – in situations. Each form has its own characteristics, its own criteria of valuation, while all the forms share similarities that I gather under the notion of "heritage fiction." Rather than a value or a sign, I argue that heritage is a fiction composed by a specific relation to the past, the idea of culture as a specific entity, the importance of experts, and moral principles – Smith (2006) underlines similar features in the "authorized heritage discourse." I finally take as a basis the circulation and the anchorage of the heritage fiction and its forms to think of the local and the global as qualities and not as scales or levels. After Collier and Ong (2005) and Latour (2007), I argue that the global is what circulates intensively while the local is what is framed and anchored in a situation.
1.2.2. Methodology and epistemology
"Ce qui se passe vraiment, ce que nous vivons, le reste, tout le reste, où est il? Ce qui se passé chaque jour et qui revient chaque jour, le banal, le quotidien, l’évident, le commun, l’ordinaire, l’infra ordinaire, le bruit de fond, l’habituel, comment en render compte, comment l’interroger, comment le décrire?" Perec (1989: 11)
"For we are made of lines. We are not referring to lines of writing. Lines of writing conjugate with other lines, life lines, lines of luck and misfortune, lines productive of the variation of the line of writing itself, lines that are between the lines of writing." Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 215)
Doing ethnography and anthropology means choosing within a family of methods of encounter and of writing up techniques of this encounter. In Fez, the encounter was mainly threefold. Firstly, I carried out semi directed interviews with inhabitants (Moroccans and foreigners,
17 living in the new or the old city), and members of institutions (in Fez but also in Rabat and Paris). I met inhabitants in their homes, and members of institutions in their office or in a café in the New City. I also had informal talks during dinners and on the street. Some inhabitants became acquaintances and having dinners with them gave me an access to a different discourse about their house than they had in the context of a formal interview. For example, as regards foreigners, we talked about their personal life and trajectories, security in the medina, problems with Moroccan employees and workers or with the administration more generally, the development of tourist accommodations and their threats, or tourists and comments on TripAdvisor, that is to say what really matters to them. As far as Moroccans are concerned, 9 after I had explained the reasons of my presence in Fez and had answered the question "how one could only come to study houses in the medina," we spoke about religion, the weather; the presence of foreigners, or the future of their children. Inhabitants offered me to visit their house or their building site, even when construction works was in progress. I discussed with Moroccan shopkeepers on the street and with the acquaintances of the Moroccan family members I lived with for three months. When I rented a flat in the medina, I was invited by the neighbours to visit them, mainly to eat and drink (and to watch television). I interviewed informants in English (all non French or Arabic speaking informants), French (French speaking foreigners and Moroccans) or Moroccan Arabic. I also observed the world around me. I took pictures of houses and of the medina – and by the way of people who wanted their picture taken. I took notes during the many hours I spent in houses, discovering their inner workings and functions – which rooms were most frequently used, what the trajectories of people are, or how the furniture is used. As anthropologists know, observation doesn’t happen without participation. In participative terms, I lived during three months with a Moroccan family and I managed four guest houses for a total amount of four months. In the first case, I learnt the language faster, as I’ve already mentioned it, and I had an "insider’s perspective" of the life in the house. I also met family members and had the door of several houses opened to me. Managing guest houses while their owners were away gave me another kind of
9 Translation was an issue. I mainly spoke French and English but I also needed some Moroccan Arabic as Moroccans sometimes don’t speak French. I started the fieldwork with one month of intensive Moroccan Arabic learning at the American Language Institute of Fez (ALIF). Moreover, I lived in a Moroccan family whose only member speaking French was most of the time away. I learnt quite quickly a basic, although far to suffice for interviewing people, Arabic vocabulary. In a first time, I worked with a male translator, a freelance photographer – occupation that gave him a lot of free time as I paid him for the translation. In houses, we were invited in the living room, and welcomed with tea and sweets. But we hardly had a tour of the house. After a while, I get used to the questions and the vocabulary. Also, many opportunities of interviews occurred by chance in the street, and instead of calling the translator, I decided to interview Moroccans on my own. I asked them to record the interview and I listened the recording with the translator within the week to translate everything. I sometimes went back to one house to deepen the interview or some information I missed the first time. Also, in the house or in the street, somebody, such as a child, speaking French and Arabic could most of the time help translating and makes a mutual understanding possible. Finally, alone with the interlocutors, I was often offered a tour of the house, and I then had an access to other rooms than the living room dedicated to the guests.
18 "insider’s perspective": how to deal with daily problems in the house (plumbing, electricity, or air conditioning) and with tourists (what are their expectations and how to satisfy them?). I also met Moroccan employees who invited me to their house afterwards, and who became informants. To base one's work on speaking and observing raises the issue of the access to senses, affects and tastes – three major topics in my research. I decided to rely on my informants' discourses in the final analysis. I observed obvious behaviours related to senses and affects, but I always asked informants what they felt at that time. The problem, then, was: how to make informants talk about their affects, senses or tastes? Scholars highly discussed the problem of "putting into words" that which one experiences but do not think of, the obvious and ineffable emotions (Lutz and Abu Lughod, 1990; Dassié, 2006) or feelings (Dassié, 2010). I showed pictures of houses interiors 10 and asked informants what they thought of the picture or how they would rank them according to their appreciation ("which one do you like the most, where do you want to live?"). It made a discussion in terms of tastes and evaluation easier. Also, when they didn't make it themselves, I asked people to use metaphors in order to express their feelings, and then to compare them with other situations during which they had or might have they have felt the same. Finally, I used written documents. I worked in the archives of the city, looking at work permits delivered before and after the World Heritage nomination in 1981. I read books written by scholars (architects, historian and art historians, geographers, archaeologists) and members of institutions, tourist booklets and guidebooks, and Moroccan magazines about architecture, history and decoration. I browsed Internet websites such as TripAdvisor for tourists’ comments about houses, promotional websites of tourist accommodations and of Fez, and the World Heritage website for the reports and conventions. The National School of Architecture in Fez (ENA) Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ArchitectureMaroc?ref=ts&fref=ts ) was also of prime interest. The ENA director posts pictures with comments and descriptions, and his Facebook friends 11 react by posting comments. To make sense of all this information in the written report, I describe the experiences I encountered in Fez. As everything – and anything – is experienced, scholars have to tell how it is/was experienced (Dewey, 1958 [1925]). To describe these encounters, I take the materiality of houses as my starting point. I follow Latour's idea (2012) about the network and I consider houses as a nub to explore the surprises – rather than the universals or invariants – houses bring to actors – rather than hide and reveal to them. The scientific materialisation of this network first takes the form of a map, offering an overview of all its components.12 My starting point to draw maps was
10 Cf. appendix p. 319. 11 Most of them work as architects or are involved in a building work in Morocco. 12 Researchers draw flat maps with different purposes. Inscribed in a material perspective, Ingold (2007a) focuses on
19 the following question: how to inhabit Fez medina houses? Inhabiting exceeds the mere accommodation. It involves living, investing the place with a function, a project, a spirit, an imaginary, developing affects and a spatial and a temporal relation with the place. As Herzfeld (1991: 133) asserts about houses in Rethemnos, "the houses and shops in the Old Town are not merely properties that people rent or buy as places to live. They are also materials expressions of family relationships, political connections, and social status." I focus on the material expressions offered by houses to review the various ways in which to inhabit a medina house. As James (1978 [1907]: 106) writes, "experience, as we know, has ways of boiling over and making us correct our present formulas." To make sense and to write it may be an endless process. The present dissertation then constitutes a breaking point in this process.
1.2.3. The choice of Fez
I base my investigation of houses and heritage on the case study of Fez. I came to work in and on this city during my Master Dissertation, dedicated to the interest of young generations in World Heritage. I spent two months in Fez, attending to a summer work camp gathering young people from France and Morocco to help builder workers in the medina. After this Master Dissertation, I continued working in and on Fez for the Ph. D. dissertation because of an interest in and an affinity with the medina. 13 However unique this experience was to me, the medina of Fez is by no way a unique case in North Africa or in the world. On the contrary, Fez and its medina share many similarities with North African and Middle East cities concerned with a post colonial setting. These cities are characterised by a change in their urban landscape in the second half of the 20 th century due to a population growth, to a displacement of elites and their replacement by rural migrants. These changes occurred in Damascus (Salamandra, 2004) and Cairo (Abu Lughod, 1971) among others.
lines that represent the trajectories of components and their meeting – or enmeshment – with other components. He looks at components in their movements across time and their crossings with other lines. It is the first map in the appendix (cf. p.322). This idea, close to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) notion of rhizome, stands against the tree and root metaphor that only allows a binary logic and a relation between and object and a subject without taking account of the environment. In a relational perspective, the Actor Network Theory (ANT) scholars, such as Latour (2007) rather focus on the situation and its various components. It is the second map in the appendix (cf. p. 322). In other words, Ingold (id.) focuses on the line and the movement "along " the line, while Latour (id.) is interested in the localisation and the situation "across " the line. Latour’s lines connect entities of a network while Ingold’s lines are possible connections left by a live being. Both nonetheless share the idea of flattening the pleats. Ingold (id.) unravels the ball of threads to follow the line and Latour (id.) irons the folded sheet to follow what sustains the movement. Both are also concerned with bringing humans and non humans in a same environement but the ANT forgets materials to focus on the materiality of things. 13 This affinity partly came from an initial feeling of exoticism in the medina because of its architectural features and because of the different way of life the medina suggests. Warmth, sun, the smile of inhabitants are among the cliché – weighed afterwards – inviting for a longer stay in an anthropological purpose.
20 In these three cities, as well as in Rethemnos (Herzfeld, 1991), several rural families inhabit former houses of elites while elites have moved to the New City. In that context, owning a house or an apartment in the New City is the clearest mark of social prestige. Although many rural migrant dream to move in a comfortable and convenient apartment in the New City, the Old City has regained a prestige value in the eyes of many elites (Salamandra, id.). After having been the symbol of backwardness, Old Cities are a contemporary concern at least for elites and foreigners – inhabitants of Old Cities still consider them as backward. However, elites do not intend to move back in their Old City because of a lack of modern conveniences. They mainly revalue the unique architectural heritage and promote it as a national resource. The return of elites in the Old City is then a myth, as is the return of the Old City to its past golden age (Salamandra, id.). Old City inhabitants, elites and foreigners indeed share nostalgic feelings and expression for Old Cities, and make them a symbol of resistance, of anti colonial struggle (Çelik, 1997). For instance, inhabitants see the kasbah of Alger, studied by Driss (2005) as the witness of an idealised communitarian past, a unique urban model. Its historical legitimacy lays in its identity values. The kasbah was a place of claims and struggles. It is now a myth of social and cultural cohesion. It is at the same time a marginalised neighbourhood, with no centrality, a place of poverty. Old cities, and particularly Damascus (Salamandra, id.) are associated with a prestigious and famous urbane and cultural life style. Fez and Damascus were taken as models of Islamic cities, and the mosaic metaphor helped scholars to make account of their religious, ethnical and regional diversity. Both also had the status of commercial and political capital cities located at the crossroad of commercial and religious roads. Similarly to Rethemnos (Herfeld, id.), Fez hosted several populations and was an administrative centre. Also, the implementation of official policies of monumentalisation and heritagisation went together with the development of tourism, and many conservation actions in the Old Town turned buildings into tourist accommodations and restaurants. Fez also shares these features with Luang Prabang, a World Heritage site located in Laos (Berliner, 2012; Berliner and Istasse, 2013), Florence in Italy (Amahan and Fantoni, 2008) and Hoi An in Vietnam (Vo Sang, 2004).
21 2. Fez
In this section, I introduce the Fez medina, its history, its populations and the cultural heritage policies orienting the preservation of the city. I also focus on the arrival of UNESCO and its consequences in the appraisal of heritage. In closing, I address the development of tourism in the city. These features constitute the general setting of my research.
Pic 1. The heart of Fez medina with the Quaraouiyine mosque (white minaret) and the Moulay Idriss shrine (green minaret). Credit: M. Istasse
Fig. 1. Map of Fez medina (Fez el Bali). www.decouvrir fes.com
22 2.1. History of Fez
Fez was Morocco’s first capital city of. Its established reputation as a holy city (the city of Moulay Idriss II), as a cultural centre (the city of the first university in the world, the Qaraouiyine) with a unique architectural style (the Arab Andalus style), is still recognised nowadays. According to tourism guidebooks, local guides, foreign and Moroccan inhabitants, scholars, or members of various institutions, Fez is a traditional city (the most conservative in Morocco), 14 a mysterious city (a city with a "deep spirit ", with a maze of small streets where it is easy to get lost), and a medieval city (no cars are allowed within the city walls, where donkeys still carry goods). In 808 (192 H) 15 Moulay Idriss II founded Fez. His father, Moulay Idriss I, had fled Bagdad and the Abbasid repression in 786 and founded the city of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, a religious centre located 60 kilometres west of Fez. His son established his own city in a former Berber camp in the Saiss plain along the Oued Fes river – an affluent of the Oued Sebou river. The Oued Fes cuts the city into two banks. The right bank is the former Berber camp, madinat Fās, 16 in which migrants from Andalusia arrived in 818 819 and replaced the Berbers. It then became the Andalus bank. The Arab newcomers, mainly from Kairouan, settled on the left bank, named Fās al 'liya or the Kairouan bank. Moulay Idriss II chose the location for its natural advantages: fresh and abundant water, agricultural land, stones and clay, salt, surrounding forests of cedar and oak. Fez also sat at the crossroads of major commercial and pilgrimage routes going from the Mediterranean Sea to Sub Saharan Africa. Climate also played a positive role, for both intense solar exposure and frequent winter rain characterise the region. Scholars and writers discuss both the history and the name of Fez. They base their argument on the writings of medieval Arab scholars (Le Tourneau, 1949; Levi Provençal, 2001 [1922]), on numismatic analyses (Colin, 1936), or on linguistic analyses (Pellegrin, 1952; Benchekroun, 2011). However, all agree that the foundation of Fez gave birth to the first Moroccan dynasty, the Idrissid. Berber and Arab dynasties followed, successively the Almoravid (end of 10 th mid 12 th century), the Almohad (mid 12 th mid 13 th century), the Merinid (mid 13 th end 15 th century), the Saadian (early 16 th mid 17 th century) and the Alaouite (mid 17 th nowadays). Although these dynasties
14 Inhabitants often compared Fez to Marrakech. "I always give this answer. It is a bit strange, but to me it is true. Imagine a family with two daughters. One is veiled, the other not. It is the comparison; Marrakech is the facility, the glamour. She lives like this, it is good it is her nature. Fez, it is the veiled one, you have to take it with more... It is a conservative, which needs to be discovered. You need a lot of efforts" (Fettah, Moroccan guest house owner). 15 H means hegira in the Muslim calendar. 16 In the following, I write in italic the Arabic terms that are all gathered in a glossary p. 312. I slightly amend the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies system for formal Arabic. H is a deep aspirated h, above a latter mention a long vowel, ‘ stresses the guttural sound of ayn (/ʕ/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet), kh is a consonantal sound similar to "loch " in Scottish English, u is translated into the sound "ou ", q refers to the sound /q/ in the IPA.
23 alternatively chose Marrakech, Meknes or Fez as capital cities, each of them took care of Fez. Similarly to dynasties, various populations lived there: Berbers, Arabs and Sephardic Jews arrived in the 9 th century and after in the 15 th and 16 th centuries, Algerians, French under the Protectorate in the 20 th century, rural migrants since the 1950s, Sub Saharan students attending universities and high schools, tourists and foreign residents (Le Tourneau, 1949 and 1985; Burckhardt, 1992). This mix of populations, dynasties and origins influenced, among others, the appearance and the importance of the Fassi (i.e. from Fes) built heritage and urban planning. The two main mosques, the Andalus mosque on the Andalus bank and the Qaraouiyine mosque on the Kairouan bank, were built during the Idrissid period. A legend traces their origin, sponsoring and initial building back to two sisters from the Fassi Fihri family. Each dynasty subsequently improved and extended them. The Qaraouiyine mosque became the first university in the (Arab) world and was endowed with an important library. Famous scholars such as Ibn Khaldun, Averoes, or Pope Sylvester II, studied and taught there. The Almoravid and Almohad dynasties extended housing on the hill and linked the two banks within the same city walls. Merinid sultans built 6 out of the 7 madrasa (sg. medersa : Koranic school providing an accommodation to foreign – that is to say alien to the city – students), the shrine of Moulay Idriss II (whose body was "discovered " at that period), and the area of Fez Jdid, which hosted the Sultan’s palace and the mellaH , the Jewish neighbourhood. One reason for this specific area was the arrival of Muslims and Jews fleeing Spain at the end of the 15 th century and coming to Fez where accommodations had to be built for them. These migrants also brought their craft and architectural techniques, leading to the development of the "Fassi style ", also named the Arab Andalus or Spanish Moorish style. Finally, Saadian sultans built four borj (i.e. fortified buildings) around the city. The look of Fez dramatically changed between 1912 and 1956 under the French Protectorate. The French authorities built a New City two kilometres away from the medina (Jelidi, 2012) and created more than 11 hectares (28 acres) of parks and gardens, with among others Dar el Batha and Jnan Sbil – also known as Boujloud gardens. Fez also lost its status of capital city at the time. Lyautey, the General Resident from 1912 to 1927, started centralisation along the Atlantic coast. He made Rabat the political capital city, developed the Casablanca port to make it a new economic centre, and created two new cities along this ocean side, Mohammedia and Port Lyautey (nowadays Kenitra). Fassi elites, be they merchants, scholars or politicians, lost their interest in Fez and moved to these new centres. Major changes followed the end of the Protectorate in 1956 and Independence in 1957. I will now do an overview of three of them, with respect to population, cultural heritage policies, and tourism development.
24 2.2. Inhabitants in the Fez medina
According to the 2004 17 population census, about 20,088 households live in the medina, which means 117,551 inhabitants – depending on other sources, the population estimate varies between 160,000 and 280,000 inhabitants. Out of the 20,088 households, 20 live in a villa; 2,522 in a flat (12.6%); 12,994 in a traditional Moroccan house (64.7%); 3,613 (18%) in a modern Moroccan house; 123 in a shanty house; 1 in a rural house and 815 in the "others" category. Also, 8,738 households (43.5%) own their dwelling (32% are private owners and 11% have a joint ownership); 8,992 (44.8%) rent it; and 1,566 benefit from free housing. In relation to nationalities, out of the 955,188 inhabitants in Fez, 1,682 are registered as foreigners. This figure drops to 193 foreigners out of the 117,551 medina inhabitants. However, the low number of foreign nationalities is questionable. For instance, British and Americans, amongst others, are notable by their absence in the population census. However, in her investigation of foreign guest house owners, Bakhella (2008) counts about 300 foreigners. 50% of them are French, 17% British, 9 % American, Spanish and Italians represent each 3% of the foreign population, and Algerian, Irish, Australian, German, Canadian, Belgian, Swedish and Iraqi owners each represent 1%. The 2004 population census stresses that, in terms of educational attainment, 58,989 of the Moroccan medina inhabitants went to or are in school: 3,848 (6.5%) attended Koranic school (pre school); 28,023 (47.5%) attended primary school; 13,903 (23.6%) finished junior high school; 8,140 (13.8%) finished secondary school and 5,075 (8.6%) have a university degree. Out of the 81,333 persons aged 7 and over, 34,909 (42.9%) are working. There is only one member of the family working in 69% of households, and two working members in 19% of them. Occupations relate to the industrial sector and crafts (40.5%), business such as shops (26.2 %), services (13%) and the public sector (12%). Finally, 1,608 (8%) households live under the poverty level (60% median income threshold, which means 2,100 Dh – 191 € or 246 $ – per month).
The Fez medina also witnessed two important population movements. On the one hand, the Fassi elites started leaving Fez in the late 19 th century, but a massive departure occurred after Independence in 1957. These people now live in the New City, in Casablanca, Rabat, or abroad. On the other hand, when Fassi elites left, they rarely sold their houses. The latter remained empty, were occupied by caretakers, or were rented out to several rural migrant families – sometimes up to one
17 http://www.lavieeco.com/documents_officiels/Recensement%20population.pdf . If the figures do not perfectly fit the reality of the medina inhabitants, they give an idea. Also, nowhere in the census is a definition of categories such as "traditional Moroccan house " or "poverty level " is given.
25 family per floor or per room. 18 Some Moroccan elites, administrators, and scholars (Lahbil Tagemouati, 2000; Idrissi Janati, 2001) point to this population change to explain the material degradation of the medina, as migrants neither have neither the money nor the motivation to take care of houses. Some speak of the medina "ruralisation" or "proletarianisation" because rural migrants don’t become urban citizens – they maintain their old way of life. Others mention its densification or "foundoukisation "19 (El Faiz, 2002) for more and more migrants are settling in the city. Many stress the growing insecurity resulting from the lack of education among migrants. For instance, in a tourism development study published by the Ministry of Tourism in 2003 (Europraxis, 2003, my translation), the rural exodus is seen as a major problem in the Fez Boulemane region. This exodus creates visible economic and socio demographic pockets of poverty in and around the medina, and leads to "high population density, wrong building transformations, building and facilities blight, socio economic changes, craft and architectural heritage plundering by illicit traffic (bazaar keepers, touts, antique dealers)." Fassi elites made – and still make – the fame of Fez. 20 By Fassi elites, I mean the great families and the great names in Morocco (Le Tourneau, 1949; Benhaddou, 2010). These families are associated with the foundation and the rise of Fez and they now control positions in the senior administration and technocracy and manage public or private companies. There are three main categories of elites: chorfa, oulema and merchants. Chorfa (sg. charīf, pl. churafā) descend from the
18 To share a rented house was not a new practice. In an autobiographic novel, Ahmed Sefroui (2006 [1954]: 16, my translation) writes about his childhood in the medina during the late 19 th century. His family, coming from the countryside shared a house with 3 other families. "We were Fassi by accident, but we remained faithful to our rural root of seigniorial peasants." 19 A house is "foundoukised " when at least four families without any kin relationship inhabit it (El Faiz, 2002). 20 Fassi elites are associated with the refinement of Fez and the specific personality and temperament of Fassi inhabitants. According to Letourneau (1949: 205 206, my translation), "the Fassi personality appears to be very strong. […] It is normal that urban citizens having reached a certain degree of civilisation be proud of themselves. Fassi are no exception to the rule: they willingly underline the glory of their past, the excellence of their urban organisation, the skill of their craftsmen, the perfection of their culture." Fassi are very proud of their culture and are famous for their refinement, be it in their cooking or in their clothing. Together with refinement comes politeness. As the Tharaud brothers (2008: 37 38, my translation) wrote it at the beginning of the 20 th century, "[there is] one quality which, pushed to the point we see it in Fez, becomes really a virtue. This virtue is politeness. […] In Fez, where the mind is more or less similar and where only wealth creates differences between people, everybody is equally polite. […] Morals are ordered by this qaïda [i.e. law] that everybody respects, less as a personal learning than as a familial legacy, a secular heritage. For centuries, this politeness hasn't changed. […] This politeness is undoubtedly an elementary shape of civilisation, but how long would it take for our Western civilisations to create such a universal refinement in morals?" The fame of Fassi people is not always positive, as they are said to be hypocritical and obsessed with decorum and appearance (Newcomb, 2006: 302). The Tharaud brothers (2008: 38, my translation), after having praised politeness, follow as such. "I fear there is not much interesting thought in the mind of a Fassi: his feelings are equally mediocre, but such wealth of politeness manages to erect a wall of smoke over them." Fassi also have the reputation to be weak and soft, and the Tharaud brothers (2008: 37, my translation) describe them as "[p]roud, fanatic, corrupt, corrupting, narrow minded, jealous of each other, always swift to criticise and not prone to recognise services one favoured." Finally, the resistance and arrogance of Fassi was underlined during the Protectorate. Fez was seen as a dangerous and conservative city where revolutions were born. A revolution headed by Moroccan soldiers and citizens lasted three days in April after the Protectorate treaty was signed in Fez, a popular revolution arose there in August 1954 after the announcement of a possible return of Mohammed V from exile, and the manifest for Independence was written in Fez in 1944.
26 Prophet Mohammed and his wife Fatima and were – and still are – named "Moulay " or "Sidi " for men and "Lala" for women . They bear the family names of Idrissi, Alaoui, Skalli. Oulema (sg. ‘alim , pl. ‘ulamā) held religious knowledge. They taught at the Qaraouiyine university, frequently participated in decision and law making in the makhzen (i.e. government), and were responsible for the respect and transmission of traditions. El Fassi, Bensouda, Mernissi, Guennoun are among family names of this category of elites. Finally, there were numerous merchant families, such as Berrada, Tazi or Benjelloun. These traders came to Europe to export leather and carpets and to import industrial goods. As the preceding paragraphs suggest, identity and origin are matters of importance in Fez. Idrissi Janati (2002) studies the spatial distinctions between the various populations inhabiting Fez. The first difference separates inhabitants of the right and the left bank sides of the medina. The right side, madinat Fās , founded by Idriss I, was Berber, while the left side, Fās al 'liya (i.e. the high Fez) founded by his son Idriss II, was Arab. 21 The latter was said to be more urban than the right side, because Muslims, and then Jews, arrived with their techniques, know how, arts, and ways of life. They constituted the intellectual, commercial and artistic elite of the medina. A second spatial distinction relates to the opposition between Fassi and 'aroubi (i.e. peasants) . The Fassi were ahl Fās (i.e. people of Fez), oulad Fās (i.e. children of Fez), oulad a'ila (i.e. children of the family). These categories are based on genealogy rather than geography: in order to be considered Fassi, one needs to have a Fassi paternal ascendant – as opposed to being born in Fez. The remaining inhabitants are 'aroubi . Even if their family has lived in Fez since more than 100 years, they will never be Fassi. Being 'aroubi means lacking civility, urbanity, taste, refinement, that is to say what composes the "Fassi ethos." The arrival of foreign residents questions these categorisations. Foreigners are not rural migrants, are generally wealthier than inhabitants and are not Fassi because they don't have the family names and they do not hold in the high traditional politic and commercial occupations.
2.2.1. Presence of foreigners
Due to the new political and economic centres and to the arrival of rural migrants, the medina has partly lost its qualities of a spiritual, political and intellectual centre to become a centre of poverty and marginality instead. This negative image, deeply anchored since the 1980s, deters the elites from coming back into the medina, but not foreigners from settling there. The first foreign
21 A distinction that the Berber dahir (i.e. royal decree) in 1930 strengthened by creating specific status for Berber people.
27 purchase – after Independence – occurred in 1997, and several pioneers settled in the late 1990s. Because of the Iraq war and the events of the 11 th September 2001, the arrival of foreigners stalled between 2000 and 2003 but it exploded again between 2004 and 2006, with more than 60 houses bought by foreigners in 2006. The decline in purchases started in 2007 and real estate managers speak of a crisis since 2008. In the first months of 2012, foreigners owned about 300 houses in Fez. The presence of foreigners in the Fez medina is not new. According to some historical sources, Berbers descend from Vikings (Ben Amor and al., 2003) and many Moroccans take it for granted that Sephardic Jews were the first foreigners in Morocco. Jews coming from the Middle East first settled at the centre of the medina in the lihoudi (i.e. Jewish) neighbourhood before moving to the mellaH in the 14 th century. French and other Europeans (mainly missionaries) also took up residence in the medina before the Protectorate. In April 1912, following a mutiny of Moroccan soldiers, Moroccan inhabitants killed foreigners living in the medina. These casualties included the owner of the Hôtel de France , Missis Imberdis, and Father Michel Fabre. Others, in the Batha and Douh neighbourhoods, remained prisoners in their own house before being evacuated. Tranchant de Lunel recounts this event in his book Au pays du paradoxe, Maroc published in 1924. This French artist attended a French delegation meeting with the Sultan and was hosted in Dar Glaoui in the Batha neighbourhood. After this mutiny, the Residence of the French Governor was Dar Tazi, located at the entrance of the safe Batha neighbourhood. Indeed, as Hassan, the employee of the Historical Monuments, recounted, "there were incidents in the beginning. General Lyautey was besieged in a house. He was so scared! At that time, he decided to leave the place. He asked people to be careful, and not to enter religious buildings. He implemented the law forbidding access to mosques for non Muslims. It was to protect foreigners in the beginning, not to respect the intimacy of people. They [i.e. foreigners] were afraid in the medina."
The presence of foreigners, be they tourists or residents, changed the visual aspect of the medina to different degrees. The appearance of some neighbourhoods, such as the residential areas of Ziat and Douh, the tourist place of Boujloud, and the popular square of R'Cif, dramatically changed the last decade. Owners and public authorities repainted facades, repaved streets and made them cleaner. Guards keep watch of the areas at night. David, an American resident, complained that in some neighbourhoods 6 out of 10 houses belonged to foreigners, while they were 100% Moroccan owned just 10 years earlier. However, areas such as Sidi Boujida or Bab El Khokha, lacking tourist accommodations and the presence of foreigners, remain neglected. In general, scholars resort to the theory of gentrification 22 in order to explain the settling of
22 According to Veschambre (2008), gentrification is the appropriation of heritage by upper social classes who deprive
28 foreigners in Morocco (Escher, 2001; McGuinness, 2006; Nguyen and Schoepfer, 2008). However, this approach is over simplistic to describe the situation in Fez. As I have mentioned, foreign residents are not so numerous. Kurzac Souali (2007) warns against the lack of distinction between the real demographic presence of foreigners and their visual weight due to their fast settling, their presence in media campaigns, and their intermingling with tourists in the public space. Veschambre (2005) argues, for his part, that gentrification by elites is opposed to heritagisation for everybody. How can buildings be a piece of heritage if elites and dominant classes appropriate them? He then proposes to replace the term "gentrification" by those of "expropriation" and "appropriation." One can rather look at the reasons of the foreign presence in Fez. Foreigners either came to Fez to buy a house – and open a business – or they fell in love with the city and decided to settle there. A lot of them had travelled a lot before settling in Fez or they had lived abroad for a long time – French resident Gigi lived in the Ivory Coast for 20 years, Simon lived in the Emirates after he had left France. Due to this mobility, McGuinness (2006) names them "polymigrants." Transportation and the ease of access played a major role in their presence in Fez. The road and train networks have improved during the last 10 years and the 2006 Open Sky (i.e. aerial agreement between Europe and Morocco) broke the monopoly of Royal Air Maroc – Morocco’s airline company – and opened the Moroccan sky to foreign low cost companies. Ryanair brought a lot of buyers and tourists with its direct cheap flights from Europe. Many informants correlated this company with the waves of buyers and tourist in Fez. After the British buyers wave in 2003, Spanish tourists were numerous in 2010, concurrent with Ryanair’s opening of four new flights between Fez and Spain. Finally, the presence of foreigners is due to the fact that Marrakech has become too expensive and too crowded. Bakhella (2008) investigates the activity of tourist accommodation owners and correlates foreign investments and tourism development. According to her, "touristification " – rather than tourism development, which is a State planned development – best characterises the presence of foreigners in Fez. Bakhella (id.) particularly underlines the cheap property market, the ease of property purchase and economic opportunities that attracted foreigners to settle there. For instance, according to the law 18 95 of the Investment Charter, 23 retired foreign residents have a 30% discount in tax rates. Kurzac Souali (2006) also stresses the role of publicity in the home country. Television documentaries, trade shows and property exhibitions, positive ear to mouth, and Moroccan national programmes, invite foreigners to invest in the region.
lower social classes from their heritage. If rehabilitation and gentrification are two levers of heritagization, they also bring negative side effects. In that context, lower social classes can never inhabit heritage, for this latter is either demolished because of its deterioration or is appropriated by upper social classes. 23 Dahir n° 1 95 213 of 14 joumada II 1416 (8 novembre 1995).
29 Foreign informants added personal justifications for settling in Fez. Few came back to the country of their birth. More often, they wanted to change their life. Fez is, according to some of them, "a chance to refresh myself, " "a new start in my life. " For example, Olivier was working as a consultant in a bank in Belgium, leading an intense life without free time. At 30 years old, he wanted to change his life and to provide happiness for himself and for other people. Ruth, a German guest house owner, experienced her move like a rupture, facing "a different culture, a different way of life, a different job." She didn't fully choose moving to Fez. She had to build a new life, which was not easy on a day to day basis. "In order to stick it out here, I work on my inner being. I wonder if I'd be better off in Zurich, commuting to work at 7am on a bus. Well, truth is: I wouldn't."
30 2.3. Cultural heritage in Morocco
According to several scholars (Radoine, 2003; Dakhlia, 2010), there was no official cultural heritage policy before the French Protectorate (1912 1957). Cities in Morocco emerged from the desire of a Sultan, and Fez didn't escape this "rule." Moulay Idriss II founded Fez, and almost every other important building is associated – if not reduced – to its builder. The Sultan Abou Inan built the Bouanania medersa (i.e. Koranic school) in the mid 14 th century. Fatima Fassi Fihri gave her fame to the Qaraouiyine mosque. According to Radoine (id.: 458), "[s]ince the days of the Idrissid dynasty, successive rulers in different dynasties have respected the tradition of 'sultan builders.' Without destroying their predecessors' achievements, each dynasty had to compete with them and erect new works." However, Dakhlia (id.) argues that the end of a dynasty is equated with the end of its capital city, that is to say its pillage for the creation of a new capital city. She takes as example the Al Badï Palace, built in Marrakech by the Saadian Ahmed al Mansur at the end of the 16 th century and demolished by the Alaouite Moulay Ismaïl in the early 18 th century. Moulay Ismaïl used materials from the palace in Marrakech to build his palace in Meknes. Dakhlia (id.: 61, my translation) sees in this recuperation an "original form of heritage, a category of heritage transmission in itself." With the destruction and decay of former dynasty buildings, sultans transmitted history in several pieces. They turned the traces of the former dynasty into evidence of the present dynasty's power and glory, and they provided the people with a new common history. To transmit heritage, sultans didn’t appropriate elements from the past, didn’t make monumental heritage, but restored moral and symbolic shared history and ruins to the people. More generally, the Makhzen (i.e. government of the Sultan) and the Habous (i.e. Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs) managed cities (Barrou, 2005). Three main characters helped the Sultan in his management task. The amel , or bacha , the city governor, was in charge of security and urban management. Mokhzani and moqaddem (i.e. representative of the government in a neighbourhood) helped him on the field. The mohtassib , the commercial provost marshal, fixed the price and checked the commercial exchanges as well as public amenities for health and hygiene. Finally, the qadi , or judge, helped by the adul (i.e. Islamic notary), was in charge of legal and religious power. He controlled the Habous goods and funds. He managed the Qaraouiyine mosque and university, libraries and Koranic schools. He appointed and paid the teachers, checked the matters taught, and managed the funds to up keep the building. The qadi also supervised hammamat (i.e. public baths, sg. hammam ), the water network and hospitals. Among the civil society, members of Zawiya (i.e. Muslim religious building close to the tomb of a Saint.), head
31 of guilds ( amine ) and local elites helped in managing, funding and taking decisions. But their role was limited. A focus on the Habous is useful to better understand the management of heritage at that time. The term Habous refers to a public institution in charge of services and goods that are referred to as Habous or waqf (literally: immobile, locked), to these Habous goods and services, and to funds serving to maintain these goods. A Habous good is a perpetual and inalienable endowment of an immovable property whose revenue earnings are devoted to social charity work ( waqf khayri ) or to specific beneficiaries ( waqf ahli ). 24 In the first case, the property served as a provision for a designated social service financed by the revenue of the endowed property. For instance, public ovens, shops or agricultural lands were made Habous in order to fund mosques, to provide the imam with a salary and to up keep the mosque. Services in education and social help, cultural and religious buildings and their maintenance were usually funded by the earnings of these Habous goods. In the second case, when Habous goods benefited to a specific beneficiary, the endowment was different from the familial heritage inheritance based on the Koran and religious rules. With Habous endowments, the owner could preserve an entire property against the dismantling of familial heritages, could secure a property against confiscation, and could look to satisfy Allah. A manager ( mutawalli or nedhar ) appointed by the owner took care of the property in the owner's name, and usually received 10 or 15% of the Habous property revenue.
2.3.1. The Protectorate period (1912 1957)
Official policies of cultural heritage started with the Protectorate 25 (Fadili Toutain, 2010). Their inception is often attributed to the General Lyautey, the first General Resident in Morocco. An amateur of art and trained in the Algerian heritage preservation and urban construction, he had a particular interest in Fez as a place of beauty and know how in danger. According to Holden (2006), French authorities favoured the preservation of Moroccan traditional cities, and Fez in particular, to prevent social and political unrest and to provide economic security to Moroccan elites and workers. Elites had their medjless 26 (i.e. communitarian council) to control the medina and workers were employed and trained to preserve buildings. French authorities also legislated rules about the design, the architectural elements and the decorative aspects, which aimed to give a feeling of return to the city’s Golden Age and to force inhabitants to comply with the vision of the medina as a
24 In 1996, there were 748 charity Habous goods and 262 familial Habous goods in the Fez medina. 25 Venkatesan (2009) shows that the preservation and the romanticization of elected items of Indian craft also occurred during the British colonisation. 26 There were three councils during the Protectorate: a Muslim Council, a Jewish Council and a French Council.
32 medieval relic. "If wealthy Moroccans built hybrid courtyard houses, with, for example, fireplaces for heat and private baths, he [i.e. the Director of Fine Arts and Historical Monuments] believed that Europeans in Fez would jump at the chance to live in these picturesque dwellings. He wanted to prevent the construction of 'dwellings that were half European and half Moorish.' Through a strict interpretation of the design of a Moroccan house, he intended to ensure that new housing would be rented to ordinary Moroccans in need of shelter" (Holden, id.: 311). The first law about the conservation and preservation of national cultural heritage goes back to 1912 27 and the listing of monuments in Fez started two years later with the city walls and their surroundings. The entire medina was included in the list in 1954. On the one hand, official heritage policies in Morocco preceded the French ones. For instance, listing the surroundings of a monument became official in France in the 1930s – and as early as 1914 in Morocco – and the listing of sectors waited until 1963 with the famous Malraux law – against 1954 in Morocco. On the other hand, the law was reformed several times. In 1945 the law took into account natural and urban sites, the historic centres of old cities, and in 1980, the categories and procedures of inscription changed. Once a building was listed, the Fine Arts and Historic Monuments Department had to agree with any change. Part of the ruined city walls were restored, even if Tranchant de Lunel, the first director of the Fine Arts and Historic Monuments Department and an Orientalist artist, had a very Ruskinian 28 approach of consolidating without restoring or demolishing. As early as the late 1920s, the French implemented a tax for the restoration of monumental buildings and legislated building codes to control private constructions. Since April 1923, inhabitants have to apply for work permits, issued or refused by the head of Municipal Services together with the Service of Fine Arts and Historic Monuments. In 1925, about 300 work permits were issued, about 600 in 1926 and 1,123 in 1929. In 1925, the department also had to control the building site and added rules about hygiene, materials and aesthetics. At the same time, short staff in the department and the taste of owners made it difficult for the rules to be efficiently implemented and observed. The development of institutions started with the creation of the Fine Arts and Historical Monuments Department 29 by vizier decree in 1912. The department was responsible for the inventory, inspection and conservation of historical monuments. Its attributions remained more or less similar through time but its title changed several times. It became the Department of Historical Monuments, Imperial Palaces and Residences in 1920; the Department of Historical Monuments
27 Cherifian dahir (29/11/1912) according to which "it is of common interest to protect with care the relics of the past related to the history of our Empire as well as artistic creations that embellish them." 28 From Ruskin, a British art critic who, in the mid 19th century, promoted preservation over restoration which he saw as the most total destruction that a building could suffer. On the other hand, to preserve means to keep in state and to bring only necessary repairs. He wrote his main ideas in The Seven Lamps of Architecture , published in 1849. 29 In French: Service des Antiquités, des Beaux Arts et des Monuments historiques.
33 and Fine Arts again in 1925; the Inspection of Historical Monuments, Medina and Listed Sites – with Henri Terrasse at its head – in 1935; and the Department of Historical Monuments, Arts and Folklore in 1958. From 1958 until 1974, the Ministry of National Education, Tourism and Communication, and the Ministry of Cultural Affair and religious Endowments both supervised the department. In 1974, with the creation of the Ministry of Culture, the newly named Division of Museums, Sites, Archaeology and Historical Monuments rapidly became the Direction of Cultural heritage, composed since 1985 of the Division of Museums and Archaeology, the Division of Monuments and Sites – whose Inspection of Historical Monuments is part of – the Division of Inventory, and the Division of studies and interventions. Within this institutional specialisation, the role of the Inspection diminished but opened debates about laws and practices of heritage preservation. As established in the 1912 law, the Fine Arts and Historical Monuments Department controlled architectural plans and issued permits to build in the medina. Through architectural rules, the department controlled the integration of Moroccan features in the colonial architecture and supported indigenous arts and crafts. Members of this department ordered the use of indigenous materials, techniques and know how for aesthetic as well as economic reasons. They aimed to support Moroccan crafts, to create jobs, and to attract tourists. Lyautey promoted the respect of the "indigenous picturesque" and of the "local colours." Prosper Ricard – the Indigenous Art Department director from 1920 to 1935 – defined this local colour as "the external features that gives things their own nature, their specific appearance. These features depend on varied and complex elements: shape, colour, light, climate, latitude, altitude, human life, animal and vegetal life, absence of life, proximity of water, and so on" (in Terrasse and Hainaut, 2006 [1924]: 34, my translation). The aspect of many buildings, whose roots in the past are taken for granted, dates back to this period. For instance, Moroccans asked to put lattice screens at the entrance of mosques to prevent passers by from peeping in. Many Moroccan inhabitants nowadays assert this is a Koranic request. Also, in the early 1930s, members of the Department of Historical Monuments restored the Seffarine square. They built a new library, renovated the medersa (i.e. Koranic school) as well as several shops. They respected the structures and shapes of existing buildings but they used reinforced concrete for walls and foundations and they refined the architectural decoration. The square is nowadays presented as a model of traditional Moroccan architecture. Among other examples, Tranchant de Lunel decided to "maroccanise" the Campini gate, named as such after the Italian architect who built it in 1880. Tranchant de Lunel judged its Florentine style at odds with the Fassi style and aimed to blend the door in with its environment. The new door was inaugurated in
34 1916, first under the name of Boujloud gate – creating confusion with the other Boujloud gate located just 100 meters away – and subsequently renamed the French gate (cf. appendix p.323). Nowadays, nobody mentions these transformations that changed the look of the medina and contributed to the creation and anchorage of an image of Fez as a city out of time and unchanged for centuries. To preserve heritage, and aside from the Fine Arts and Historical Monuments Department, the Indigenous Arts Department collected, sorted out, and made inventories of objects and knowledge related to crafts. Members of this department made of authenticity a category assorted with criteria such as the kind of work, the kind of object produced, the place of production. In this context, Berber art was opposed to urban art and traditional crafts emerged in opposition to industrial goods brought by the French. Members published their writings in books, such as Les Arts décoratifs au Maroc (i.e. Decorative Arts in Morocco) by Henri Terrasse and Jean Hainaut (1924), or specialised journals, such as Hesperis or France Maroc . They also displayed objects and collections in museums to show the Moroccan tradition and to present them as models and standards for craftspeople – the museum of Fez opened in 1915 was among the first ones. Prosper Ricard mainly implemented these standards to avoid both the decay of Moroccan crafts as well as exoticism, which Europeans cherished. For instance, foreign residents needed furniture – too scarce and basic in Morocco – that had to follow a Moroccan or Berber style. Moroccan craftsmen on their hand had – and still have – to follow the colonial standards and models in their education and training (Girard, 2006). The Urbanism and Housing Department for its part implemented policies which influenced those related to heritage. Urban and housing laws mixed subtle and paternalist ideas with authoritarianism and radicalism (Dethier, 1973). Since 1912, Lyautey and Prost, the lead architects of the Moroccan urbanism in the early 20 th century, separated traditional Moroccan cities and French New Cities. 30 On the one hand, they aimed to preserve cultural heritage and, on the other, to develop a modern urbanism and housing specific to Europeans. This resulted in a style mixing Western, and mainly Art Deco, and Muslim architecture in architectural decorative techniques (the Cité des Habous in Casablanca is a glaring example of this style). After Lyautey and Prost's
30 Inhabitants often talked of the medina in terms of contrasts, for instance quiet and lively, marginalized and promoted, silent and noisy. The main contrast opposed the medina and the New City. Jelidi (2012) traced this opposition in her study of the construction of the New City in Fez between 1912 and 1956. Jelidi (id.) focused on the official terminology used in administrative reports. This terminology firstly contrasted the European and the Indigenous city, with race and religion as main references to distinguish both spaces. After 1925, the official terminology used the old and the new city. The opposition related to civilisation and was based on the comparison between the medina and 12th century European cities. Incompatible habits justified the separation. The opposition was not as clear in reality, and moves and exchanges between the two cities have always been intense. Those living in the New City lauded the space, the view and the air. They underlined the medina faces a problem of transportation if somebody dies or is injured, if a fire start, or simply to bring a TV or a fridge home. On the other hand, they regretted shops are not always open in the New City, there were no relationships between neighbours and people did not talk to each other.
35 departure in 1926, urban planners and architects continued to respect and implement their rules and principles. It changed in 1946 with the arrival of Ecochard, a proponent of the Athens Charter and Le Corbusier’s 31 principles. He promoted a progressive model, the international style, a functional architecture and economic housing. After Independence in 1957 and until the end of the 1970s, a functionalist and modernist approach dominated in architecture and construction. In the late 1970s, Moroccan architects and urban planners rejected that approach and called aestheticism back in the promotion of a nationalist architecture. Members of public authorities, feeling a loss of cultural identity, showed interest in authentic and traditional forms of architecture. Nonetheless, they limited their actions to marginal and formal aspects (Navez Bouchanine, 1991, 1994, 1997) and they based this revitalisation and preservation on stereotyped Islamic characteristics without any adaptation of these characteristic to the modern context (Arkoun, 1995). Laarsi (2009) speaks of the "Moroccanisation of architecture" to refer to this search for forms without any knowledge or concern for their use or way of life. The early descriptions of the medina, by both scholars and novelists, as an aesthetic, historic and symbolic place while at the same time a city in decay and decline, justified the French intervention. What French authorities implemented however didn’t answer what Rosaldo (1989) names an "imperialist nostalgia," that is to say a nostalgia of colonizers for the traditional culture and for "the form of life they intentionally destroyed" (Rosaldo, id.: 109), a nostalgia used to claim one's innocence and to make the colonizer a collector of fairly harmless memories. The preservation and conservation actions and policies implemented during the Protectorate rather aimed at preserving and collecting what was disappearing and which the French preserved, having arrived just in time to record the last pieces of a disappearing past.
2.3.2. UNESCO and the World Heritage nomination
The first capital city of Morocco, Fez was also the first Moroccan World Heritage site. It was listed in 1981 after the criteria ii. – "to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world" – and v. – "to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land use, or sea use which is representative of a culture." Seven other Moroccan, and strictly cultural, World Heritage sites joined the medina of Fez: the medina of Marrakech, the Ksar of Ait Ben Haddou, the historic city of Meknes, the archaeological site of Volubilis, the medina of Tetouan, the medina of Essaouira, the Portuguese city of El Jadida, and the modern capital and historical city of Rabat. In 2012, 12 sites, of which 5 are natural, were waiting
31 Le Corbusier, a Swiss architect, was instrumental in the establishment and the publication in 1943 of the Athens Charter. This document of urban planning set guidelines about living, working, transport and recreation in cities.
36 on the tentative list. The UNESCO adventure started in 1974 when the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Religious Endowments requested the restoration of several buildings in the medina. UNESCO consultants, Bianca, Burckhardt, Foulon and Van De Kerchoven among them, proposed to take the entire medina as a historical monument into consideration. Bianca (1980a: 31) writes that although the medina was still alive economically as a commercial centre, "the physical skeleton has fallen into an almost fatal state of neglect that elicits only despair and perplexity on the part of the administrators and technicians." The matter didn’t concern the "preservation of a small historical centre with a few markets and monuments, but rather the rehabilitation of an entire urban organism which shelters the majority of the population" (Bianca, id.: 31). As a consequence, in 1975, UNESCO, Morocco and the United Nations Development Programme (henceforth UNDP) decided to draft a Master Plan, that is to say an urban document with no legal force but providing guidelines and recommendations. It was effectively drawn up between 1976 and 1978 by Moroccan and international technicians with a UNDP loan of $700,000 (523,287 €) and it was approved in 1980. "The Master Plan for the Rehabilitation of the architectural legacy of the medina satisfies two closely related requirements. It preserves a historical and architectural patrimony of great value, and it maintains buildings which, if abandoned, would confront the government with insurmountable problems" (Bianca, 1980a: 36). In this Master Plan, scholars, heritage experts and members of institutions established guidelines directly related to heritage. They also recommended a decrease in the medina population and in the pedestrian flow. They planned to build a new housing area eastward, and to improve public transportations with, for instance, the rearrangement of R'Cif square. They aimed to remove mechanised crafts from the medina and to regulate commercial activities, preventing shopkeepers, for instance, from turning their houses into shops or workshops. Finally, they advised improving living standards by introducing a minimum of hygiene and comfort, and by encouraging initiative and responsibility among owners and inhabitants. In 1976, the UNESCO General Director proposed to open an international campaign of financial and technical support to realise these recommendations. The International Campaign for the Safeguard of Fez officially started in 1980 after a declaration of the King, Hassan II. 32 An amount of $541 million (about 421 million €) was forecast to be needed to restore several monuments and to improve public infrastructures such as water and electricity supplies. Moroccan technicians from the Ministry of Housing undertook sector specific studies. A workshop for the safeguard of Fez was created in 1978, and a Delegation for the Safeguarding of Fez, under the
32 Cf. appendix p. 324.
37 umbrella of the Ministry of Interior, replaced the workshop in 1981. Finally, in 1989, the Agency for the Development and the Rehabilitation of Fez (henceforth ADER) was implemented as a technical institution in charge of works in the medina and of sector specific studies. UNESCO also sent consultants to Fez. Titus Burckhardt worked as a UNESCO consultant and adviser there between 1972 and 1977. He then became a member of the grand jury of the Aga Khan Award for Islamic architecture in 1979 but inaugurated the UNESCO International Campaign for the Safeguard of Fez in 1980. Three consultants brought technical help in 1978: Bianca, an architect, Mackel, an engineer, and Prieto Moreno, a restorer. Michon later joined them. Frank Foulon and Frank Van de Kerchove arrived in Fez in 1981 and 1982 respectively. In spite of these experts’ presence, the first campaign did not work as well as expected because of the insufficient – and insufficiently trained – Moroccan staff (Hardouin, 1982). For instance, one permanent technician alone composed the Delegation for Safeguarding. In 1982, the technical preparation was still in process and the funding had not yet started, for too many decision levels slowed any decision making. All of this besmirched the credibility of the Campaign. Hardouin (id.) urged the Moroccan Government to introduce a national board of management; to provide the Delegation with an office – such as in the Dar Tazi Palace in the medina – as well as a status – to enable legal procedures – and a budget – to employ experts and technicians. He also recommended a better coordination between UNESCO and Moroccan institutions and a focus on the socio economic side of the project more than on the cultural one when sending a request to the UNDP. The next key event occurred in 1992 with a study ordered by the UNDP in order to plan a $64 million (about 50 million €) project. Preliminary studies gathered Groupe Huit (a French multidisciplinary office specialised in urban and municipal development), Urbaplan (a Swiss team working in urban development and management), Sides (a French firm specialised in security), ADER and UNESCO – whose consultants between May 1991 and January 1992 were Drocourt, Lazrak and Baati, three architects, and Aouini Lhaj, an archaeologist. 33 In the final project proposal, seven domains of action defined the "Safeguard Project for the city of Fez" (UNDP, 1992): • The improvement of access to the medina. • The restoration and urban development in a reference zone (‘aïn Azliten). • The improvement of housing, with the rehabilitation of traditional buildings. • The improvement of activities by restructuring economic areas and activities and removing the polluting activities out of the medina. • The preservation of cultural heritage with targeted restoration works.
33 UNESCO, the UNDP and the WB didn't hire any anthropologist as consultants. The only anthropologist working as a UNESCO consultant was Isabelle Riaboff, sent in 2005 to investigate textile art.
38 • The improvement of the environment and urban public services. • An institutional strengthening with the improvement of institutions to organise and carry out actions. However, the project didn’t go further than these preliminary reports. The biggest project, the "Fez Medina Rehabilitation Project," was headed and funded by the World Bank (henceforth WB) between 1996 and 2006. It took as a basis the UNDP project while upgrading it and making it an integrated project. It aimed not only to restore heritage and to improve the quality of life in the medina but also to favour the participation of its inhabitants. The ADER and the Unit of Housing and Urbanisation of Harvard University carried out the planning stages between 1996 and 1998. The WB then agreed on a $29 million (22,5 million €) loan to Morocco. Half of the money went to the Government, the other half to the Fez medina municipality. In 2012, two international projects were ongoing. The Hammamed project, consisting in the restoration of an old public bath (Seffarine Hammam), was carried out by the University of Liverpool, Institut Francais du Proche Orient, ADER, and the Vienne Institute, plus several national (Ministry of Culture) and local (National School of Architecture in Fez) partners. A second project, funded by the American Millennium Challenge Corporation, 34 aimed to improve and to promote the craft industry. The project "Craft and Fez Medina" is divided into four parts: Makina, related to the city walls – but it has been given up–; Square Lala Ydouna with an architectural competition to restore the eponymous square; ‘aïn Nokbi, and the funduk (i.e. caravanserai). The whole project is estimated to cost $111, 870, 000 (about 83, 705, 000 €).
Pic. 2. Bab Jdid, a new gate built in 2012.Credit: M. Istasse
34 http://www.mcc.gov/pages/countries/program/morocco compac
39 Pic. 3. Restoration of the city walls. Credit: M. Istasse
Given all these projects, it would be simplistic to reduce all the international interventions around heritage in Fez to UNESCO. On the one hand, institutions from several countries in Europe, Asia and the United States have been working hard in the city. On the other hand, national institutions and private sponsors also initiated and undertook actions around heritage. King Mohammed VI instructed the restoration of the city walls, Princess Lalla Hasnaa – the President of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the Protection of the Environment – inaugurated the renewal of the Jnan Sbil garden in 2010, the Ministry of Culture restored an ablution room, the municipality redid the facades in the two main streets; the Association des Jeunes Volontaires des Chantiers Internationaux (A.J.V.C.I.) organises summer work camps for teenagers from Europe and Morocco to help ADER workers in house; the National Office for Drinking Water (UNEP) restored several fountains. Among private sponsors, the Arabic Fund for Social and Economic Development (FADES) gave money for the traditional water network at Bab Makina. The project "One monument, one sponsor" started in 1992. 7 private sponsors committed to restore 7 monuments in the medina. Although this project was a failure (only 3 sponsors finished their restoration), the Foundation Benjelloun Meziane (BMCE Bank) funded the Bouaniya medersa (i.e. Koranic school) works and the construction of two new gates – Bab Batha in 2010 and Bab Jdid in 2012. The Karim Lamrani 35 Foundation restored the Neijjarine funduk (i.e. caravanserai) and turned it into a museum
35 Former Prime Minister.
40 of wood. The Popular Bank funded the Bab Mahrouk gate works. In a way, UNESCO has succeeded in turning Fez into a city of universal concern, a place of encounter between international sponsors, academics, public authorities, and tourists interested in its cultural heritage. However, in their reports, UNESCO consultants and scholars criticise the projects implemented by UNESCO and other international institutions. On the one hand, they underline the necessity of multidisciplinary teams. According to Michon (1982: 9, my translation), "the research for punctual projects to carry out in a very dense urban fabric, where functions are interwoven and where balances shouldn't be disturbed without any major reason, is an exercise that can only be done in a team." On the other hand, they denounce the too many actors involved in the medina preservation and their lack of coordination (Akdim and Laaouane, 2010). Scholars also mention a top down model that is too technical and architectural (Lanchet, 2006). They emphasise the failure of projects to take into account the perceptions and practices of inhabitants (El Bouaaïchi Nadri, 2006). They condemn unrealistic and overly global projects lacking precise strategies and resulting in no real change (Lahbil Tagemouati, 2001; Abry, 2005). Boumaza (1999) describes international projects as semi failures, for they have nonetheless contributed to enhance knowledge about the medina thanks to the studies carried out. 36 Kurzac Souali (2006: 342, my translation) asserts that "[t]he preservation of this heritage progresses through residential tourism, the ryad trend and the punctual work of sponsors. The most dynamic actors in these transformations are private actors, and their approach is barely inscribed in a more general policy of preservation. It is essential to underline that the first actors of restoration and safeguard in the medina are foreigners."
Roughly speaking, the medina experienced what Fabre (2009) calls the promotion, depreciation and over promotion process. After having been the cultural and spiritual capital of Morocco and the core of preservation during the Protectorate period, the medina became a marginal and poor neighbourhood. Left by elites, it has lost its centrality and its role of integration of the newcomers – mainly rural migrants – into the city life. It has been promoted again after its World Heritage nomination in the early 1980s, and had its public infrastructures modernised thanks to, among others, investments of private and public international sponsors.
36 In addition to the Master Plan, the 1981 nomination was surrounded by several sector specific and academic studies. ADER published punctual reports about the medina or its activity. The Centre interdisciplinaire d'études urbaines of the University of Toulouse and the Department of Geography of the University of Fez drawn the Atlas de la médina de Fès (1990).
41 2.3.3. UNESCO: a visible absence
A billboard on the motorway points out Fez as a World Heritage site. In the medina, the billboard of the International Centre for the Promotion of Craft Industry (CIPA) displayed the UNESCO logo, but it was removed in January 2011. Tourism guidebooks present the medina as a World Heritage city worth visiting and many local guides remind tourists about this in the first minutes of the city tour. Some owners of tourist accommodations make mention of this listing in their promotional website.
Pic. 4. Billboard of the CIPA. Credit: M. Istasse
A discussion I had with Jawad, a Moroccan inhabitant, better gives an idea of the UNESCO presence and its role in Fez after 30 years of listing.
"Me: Do you know the medina is listed as a World Heritage site? Jawad: Yes. Me: Do you know when this happened? Jawad: No. Me: And do you know what UNESCO means? Jawad: No. Me:. Do you think what it does is important? Jawad: Yes. Me: What does it do? Jawad: Precisely, I cannot tell you. But it is good the city is a UNESCO heritage. Yes, it was a glimpse from the outside. And it attracts tourists."
42 This "visible absence" (Berliner and Istasse, 2013) gives UNESCO the appearance of a "myth" (Lahbil Tagemouati, 2001) in the mouths of inhabitants. When I asked them, most, like Jawad, didn't know when the medina was listed or what UNESCO is or does. As Gigi, a French guest house manager, declared, "I have never thought about that! I think it is good, as I see around me and from what people say, because my information sources are much reduced. So, I've heard that part of the money helping in restoring the medina comes from UNESCO, and the other part from the European Union. So, I think it can be only good." Abdelhay, a Moroccan inhabitant who own a home stay, was among the rare informants who knew when the medina was listed by UNESCO. He thought UNESCO was important for the city, but "precisely, I cannot tell you [what UNESCO is], but it is good the medina is a listed heritage." Informants usually associated UNESCO with several specific consequences. UNESCO bears the positive image of a Savior acting when the situation is desperate and giving money in order to fix houses or sewage. Aïcha, a Moroccan inhabitant, thought UNESCO "does a lot of works now. When a beldi [i.e. traditional] house is damaged, UNESCO gives 4 millions to do the work. No, UNESCO doesn't give 4 millions, UNESCO gives 2. Noss noss [i.e. half half]." Only a few, like Helen, the British manager of a renting agency, knew that "UNESCO doesn't fund anything. They haven't given any money. They don't have any money to give. Being a World Heritage site attracts money, like the Italian Government restored Dar Adiyel. 37 But I don't think UNESCO gave any money." Many Moroccans thought that UNESCO brought tourists and money. Jawad was one of them. "You know, Fez medina, as it is listed, there is a lot of people coming. A lot of tourists are coming only for that. So, we have to safeguard the medina. Moreover you know, when tourists come, it creates a lot of jobs. Everybody finds a job, and it is good." Mohammed, a Moroccan home stay owner, shared Jawad's view. "Heritage site or not, it is not interesting for us. It is interesting for the future of Moroccan tourism, particularly in Fez. It is interesting for tourists from Europe. They hear it is a heritage site and they come." To many tourist accommodation owners, the World Heritage label is like a brand. Amélie, a French guest house owner, insisted on the prestige given by UNESCO. "I know that at the international level, it is rated. It is listed, so it makes references in books." Also, Hassan, a member of the Inspection of Historical Monuments, lauded the listing of the medina as a World Heritage site. Firstly, "the listing is a label that attracts tourists and financial influx." Secondly, the listing "attract[s] sponsors, but also make[s] the population aware of heritage," as "it is very important for the whole of humanity to preserve them [i.e. World Heritage
37 House restored between 1993 and 1996 by Italia, Morocco and UNESCO, and currently the museum of Andalus music.
43 sites] everywhere in the world. A genius created World Heritage in order to involve the world in its preservation." According to him, inhabitants have to be involved in the preservation process, and he promoted an integrated view of preservation, that is to say to include the various institutions in charge of the medina and inhabitants into projects aiming at the development of the city. On the other hand, Idrissi Janati (2001) presents Fez as an example of emblematic safeguard for two reasons: Fez benefited from the first UNESCO policy implemented in North Africa, and its safeguard and promotion is symptomatic of the difficulties and ambiguities between modernity, tradition, past, future and identity. He then investigates the images of the medina of both inhabitants – which he defines as bottom actors – and politicians – which he defines as top actors – in order to understand the system of values underlying their images, and then to determine the interest and advantage of preserving the medina. These images fall into two opposite categories. Politicians see the medina as a place to preserve and to promote as an architectural and cultural heritage while inhabitants define the medina as a depreciated place, a marginal and unsafe neighbourhood. Roughly speaking, a nostalgic discourse on the medina goes together with a discourse about its contemporary needs and lacks.
Other inhabitants were critical of UNESCO. In their view, UNESCO did nothing in Fez. "I think they [i.e. UNESCO] do fantastic things, fantastic. And, maybe you will refute what I say, but they moved the Abou Simbel Temple? I find it brilliant, I'm amazed. It is something Pharaonic to preserve things like that. But I haven't seen any Pharaonic actions in Fez," complained Amélie, the same French guest house owner. Sarah, a French resident, gave another example. "I lived in the Val de Loire. It is listed, classified, categorised, I don't know how to say. Listed as a World Heritage site. And actions are lead, concrete actions, which we can see as inhabitants of the Val de Loire. There was the conversion of the banks of the Loire into green roads for cycles. We saw every year, I don't know, 50 or 60 kilometers of banks improved in this way. Some areas have been equipped for walkers, people who want to sit on the river bank, benches and so on. So, there, it is concrete. But in Fez, today, are there actions carried out? I don't know." Omar, Nordin and Mehdi, three Moroccan guest house employees, accused Moroccan politicians of hindering UNESCO's work. As Omar said, "UNESCO, I know what it means: to preserve cultural heritage. But it is useless. It is only money. Give money to Moroccans, they buy Jaguars or they send their children to study abroad." Catherine, a French architect working for the Millennium Challenge Corporation project, also criticised UNESCO and ICOMOS members for having "overly theoretical approaches. When members of an international organisation such as UNESCO, which I know better, give their
44 opinion, I noticed a complete lack of understanding on their part, of the relations between the social and the built environments for instance. Experts, generally they are Italians, come and says 'Olala, there is a lump there [i.e. on the facade of a house].' Generally, it is additional toilets. 'It has to be removed straight away.' Ok, well, nice, but then nobody can live there anymore. So you have to think before taking any decision. And often, they take executive decisions to preserve the monumental aspect of the buildings without taking account of people living there, without taking account of the social aspect." Hassan, the Inspection of Historical Monuments employee, underlined the limits of the listing and the role of UNESCO. "UNESCO policies? There are none. It is a convention. It is very limited. In fact, UNESCO does not aim to intervene directly. It intervenes only to give its opinion about the modification or the transformation of a place. All the countries that signed the convention have to apply it, to respect it. But UNESCO intervenes solely in case of important projects." In his view, the medina does not belong to UNESCO, but to the Ministry of Culture – UNESCO only has a right of inspection – as the medina is first and foremost a national heritage since 1954. He added that "Fez suffers from its heritage burden" because the money needed to ensure its preservation cannot be fully given by the Government or the local authorities. Fettah, a Moroccan guest house owner, accused both UNESCO and Moroccans. On the one hand, "UNESCO thought that the listing of Fez would made Moroccans aware of their heritage and take care of it, but it didn't work." On the other hand, "Moroccans hoped that, as a World heritage site, the world would come with money to take care of the medina." Some, such as Laïla, a Moroccan architect born in Fez but living in Rabat, even talked of a UNESCO resignation in Fez. "UNESCO took its leave a long time ago. It only funds conferences. Debates about the medina are very interesting but become annoying after a while. It becomes comedy like! We bring international experts together in the medina but nothing is done. We bask in our own status to be experts and to recognise others as such. Now, UNESCO is completely bureaucratic. Honestly, I don't see its militant action in the city." Ruth, a German guest house owner, has also completely lost faith in UNESCO. "UNESCO? Let me laugh! People build whatever they want! In front of the Bouanania minaret [i.e. minaret of a famous Koranic school], a Moroccan has built a very ugly skyscraper. We cannot see the minaret anymore, which is one of the most beautiful ones. So UNESCO, yes. But where and how? And what does it mean?" Others were critical of the entire UNESCO enterprise. "UNESCO listings don’t mean anything. They list everything. In my opinion, there should be another listing between the 7 wonders of the world and UNESCO, because they list everything, everything, everything. In France, small chapels in the middle of nowhere are listed UNESCO" (Jean Pierre, French guest
45 house owner). Steve, an American guest house owner, evoked the lack of pedagogy of international projects. "I think I may criticise one thing. These huge machines, World Bank, UNESCO, they have a lot of very good initiatives, but they are weak in communication. When leading such projects, you have to consider who you are talking to." Finally, inhabitants show indifference. "Personally, I don’t care," said Olivier, a Belgian resident. "When you fight for a house, to make it live, and to restore it, you are in the reality of things. So, it is nice, UNESCO, but it is very abstract to me. What does it bring?" asked Evelyne, a French guest house owner.
2.3.4. Definitions of heritage
Scholars have intensively discussed the plural meanings and definitions of heritage in terms of dissonance (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Bruce et Creighton, 2006 ), resistance toward heritage and UNESCO politics (Collins, 2008) , or multivocality (Owens, 2002). Fez doesn’t escape this norm of heterogeneity in heritage. In the following, I do a review of the definitions informants gave heritage. First of all, informants, whether Moroccans or foreigners, agreed on two issues related to heritage. The first one concerns the ubiquity of heritage, which is "everywhere in the medina. I think a small house is as important as a huge house or a palace. The smallest fountain, craft, all is heritage. It is a whole, I do not make distinctions" (Amélie, French guest house owner). As Abdelhay, a Moroccan home stay owner, said, one can find heritage "in houses, mosques, madrasa [i.e. Koranic schools], suqūq [i.e. markets, sg. sūq ], craft, food." The link between these elements makes "the spirit of Fez." Jawad, a Moroccan inhabitant, asserted, " turāth [i.e. heritage] is everywhere. It is anything qdim [i.e. old], very old. Old, but zuin [i.e. beautiful]." He then described the medina as taqafiya (i.e. cultural), tarikhiya (i.e. historic), l’asima l’ilmiya (i.e. world wonder). A second agreement relates to the Golden Age of the city under the Merinid dynasty (13 th – 15 th centuries). Fez was at the core of a large empire, hosted a famous university welcoming teachers and students from the whole Arab world and beyond, was famous for the quality of its craft industry, and benefited from an active cultural life thanks to the various populations. However, this Golden Age is now over. Fez is not anymore what it was. One could only imagine what it must have been like, losing oneself in the maze of the narrow streets. This image of a lost Golden Age goes back to the Protectorate. Novelists insisted on the glorious but bygone past of the medina (Harris, 1921; De Lunel, 1924; Loti, 1929). They urged to come back to this past time, or at least to preserve what remained. The Tharaud brothers (2008 [1930]) characterised the medina by torpor and
46 mystery, while others compared the medina to its European equivalent, a medieval city, with its labyrinth of narrow and dark streets, and donkeys. Scholars also participated in making of Fez a city out of time with theirs writings in Hesperis or France Maroc (Holden, 2006). Nowadays, as Newcomb (2006: 293) writes, "the medina serves as an object of nostalgia, as a symbol of the former apogee of Moroccan civilisation, and as a place over which they feel proprietary even if they no longer own property there." Inhabitants superimpose a mythical and romantic image of a Golden Age on the reality they experience everyday. They tend to focus on the decay and the negative aspects of the medina, and are nostalgic for a lost paradise. In the following, I distinguish the Moroccans' and the foreigners' definition of heritage. Scholars usually underline this distinction: locals and foreigners do not allocate the same values to heritage. Also, informants, and more precisely Moroccan elites and foreigners, asserted that Moroccans do not care about heritage and do not have any heritage skill. In their view, most Moroccans do not even know what heritage is. 38 I then reproduce this distinction between Moroccans and foreigners while I put their definition and approach of heritage in perspective in the following section with the specific example of houses. One shouldn't think that all Moroccans or all foreigners have similar definitions of heritage and constitute a homogeneous category.
2.3.4.1. "Moroccans" and heritage
In a study dedicated to the attitudes, perceptions and knowledge that Moroccans have of their heritage, Bouziane, el Maliki and Hakik (2010) underline two drawbacks in the study of heritage in Morocco. On the one hand, heritage is first and foremost a private good in Morocco – what belongs to familial ancestors – before being a public one. Public heritage, what a nation – and not a family – passes on from generation to generation, is a recent notion. Heritage was born during the Protectorate period and Moroccans discovered the heritage quality of things in comparison and in competition with modern, new and industrial items. Meriem, a young Moroccan architect, underlined this lack of awareness. "I think that few people are aware, or more precisely know what it [i.e. heritage] is. I'm an architect, I know what it represents, what it means. But people who are not familiar with this profession, I wonder if they are really aware of it. I think that when we speak of turāth [i.e. heritage] here in Morocco, we speak first of all of immaterial heritage. For instance, turāth lmusiqi [i.e. musical heritage] is often performed in TV shows. People hear about music
38 There is no essential or natural difference between Moroccans and foreigners. Following Descola (2011), one could say that they have different schemes of transcription and distinction in their experience of reality and then favour such or such kind of relation to the world. I distinguish them in this section while I underline similar practices of transcription, qualification and distinction in the section 5.
47 bands, Amazigh music, Andalus music. There is the Sacred Music Festival in Fez. We also speak of kaftan [i.e. traditional dress], taqāfa maghribiya [i.e. Moroccan culture], or mint tea. And people do not especially associate them with the medina, because they have all of this at home, in the New City." The second drawback consists in the fact that there is no single word in Moroccan Arabic to talk about heritage. In Fez, informants used several words. Warth is a Moroccan word for "inheritance," what parents pass on to their children. To talk about public heritage, Moroccans use classical Arabic terms, turāth and āthar. Āthar is " an historical monument. An historical monument is something linked to the government. And we cannot buy it. We cannot undertake works in it. And it is old, very old. […] Because āthar , it is things we do not use, that we only see but do not use. Like Volubilis, we do not use it because we are not going to live in Volubilis. And pyramids, they are āthar . We visit and we see " (Nordin, Moroccan guest house employee). Turāth on the other hand points to the material and immaterial objects handed down by the forefathers, most of the time connected to religion ( din ) or traditions ( taqālīd ). It is, still according to Nordin, "all what the grandfathers left, and we have to keep them. We call it turāth . If the grand fathers left respect, respect is heritage. There is turāth when we speak of sentimental things. For instance mosques, the flag of Morocco, are turāth . Also, when we arrived [i.e. were born], we found them. We did not experience their beginning. This is why we say turāth . The grandfathers lived its beginning, not us. […] A house in the medina is turāth , a sūq [i.e. market] is turāth . Because the y do not change, t hey remain like they were at the beginning." Hamid, a shopkeeper, distinguished turāth (i.e. cultural heritage) and taqālīd (i.e. traditions, way of life). In his shop, he sells turāth, that is to say "old jellaba ,39 old Haïq ,40 old capes. They were made in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. They are old." A jabador 41 made a week earlier is "a copy. It is not turāth , it is taqālīd. You find the same things than the old ones, but it is not made by hand. And it is not the same material. And it is not the same price." Given these drawbacks, Bouziane, el Maliki and Hakik (2010) show that the interest of inhabitants in heritage relies on the kind of heritage (tangible and intangible), the proximity to heritage (to live close to a site or far away in the countryside), and the person's characteristics (urban or rural, literate or illiterate, man or woman).
39 Long dress with short or long sleeves and a hat, worn by men and women in North Africa. 40 White veil or mask in lace covering the bottom of the face of women in North Africa. 41 Large pants and assorted shirt.
48 2.3.4.1.1. Tangible heritage
Among monuments and buildings, Moroccan informants mostly cited the Qaraouiyine mosque and its university, Bab Boujloud, the city walls, the Moulay Idriss shrine, some madrasa (i.e. Koranic schools) such as the Bouanania, and the tanneries. Informants mentioned these monuments with pride. As Fettah, a Moroccan guest house owner, put it, their architecture reflects the culture of Morocco and makes the medina unique and exceptional in the world. Monuments reflect a long and glorious past, they characterise their Fassi origins, and they are predominantly religious buildings. According to Abdu, another Moroccan guest house owner, Fez is a heritage because "there is no second Fez in the world. Fe z is unique. It is the jewel of the Arab world. It is the Islamic centre of the Muslim world. We could speak of Fez for days and nights." Emotions, spirituality and identity mix in the relationship that Moroccans develop with these monuments and buildings. Other monuments are linked to a bygone past. For instance, Omar defined the entire old medina and parts of the Ville Nouvelle built by the French as heritage because nobody builds buildings such as, for instance, the Moulay Idriss shrine, anymore. Moroccans generally perceived houses positively whatever their state of decay. Jawad, a Moroccan inhabitant, stated that traditional and old houses are more beautiful and bigger than new ones. Nordin, a Moroccan guest house employee, asserted that some houses may be heritage, "houses āthar , that is to say houses that are difficult to correct the situation inside [i.e. to restore], houses that are about to collapse. People feel the danger and leave. And the house is like an historical monument." Many Moroccans are not eager to live in these houses. During our interviews, they linked houses with negative perceptions as soon as they talked of daily life. They complained about the state of decay, the cost of the maintenance work, and the pains of housework. According to Omar, a Moroccan guest house employee, Moroccans do not consider a piece of zelij (i.e. mosaic) as heritage because "they have it in front of their eyes everyday." As a consequence, it has no value for them and it is normal they decide to replace traditional mosaic by industrial tiles that change from those they are used to. Omar emphasised that this change is not so radical because industrial tiles reproduce the mosaic patterns. Informants spoke of movable properties in terms of tradition, culture and age rather than in terms of heritage. Antique dealers collect antique and ancient objects and sell them to foreigners, but also to Moroccans owning a business – restaurant or tourist accommodation – and the few Moroccans living in the New City interested in antiquities. Some foreigners criticised antique dealers as being thieves stealing from empty houses but many of them praised the knowledge of their favourite antique dealer. Similarly to some bazaar keepers (Cauvin Verner, 2006), antique
49 dealers can tell amazing stories about one particular object, about its origin, its use, or its technique of fabrication. They nonetheless prefer selling objects at "a good price" in the clients' view instead of selling it at "its real price." In other words, they would rather keep their clientele than increase the price of things to their proper market value. Few Moroccan informants mentioned movable property located in their house or in museums as being heritage. In fact, few of them had ever visited any museum in Fez or elsewhere. They know the Batah museum (the town museum), the Neijjarine museum (museum of wood), and to a lesser extend the North Borj museum (museum of weapons). To them, only items they do not use anymore deserve to be displayed in a museum. Aziz, a Moroccan manager in a guest house, described lqa, small squared cushions "of 50 cm by 50 cm. We put them in a corner of the salon, directly on the ground. And there were the big carpets with cushions here and there. People liked sitting on the cushions, like this, on the ground, with the plate to make tea." The banquette has now replaced cushions. Moroccan inhabitants also mentioned what their parents passed on to them, such as Moroccan banquettes or jewels. Clothes were of particular interest. Moroccan inhabitants cited jellaba , babuch (i.e. shoes), serual (i.e. pants with a low crutch close to the knees worn by man), jabador and tarbuch (i.e. red hat in felt) as specifically Moroccan clothes. They also described which clothes to wear for particular rituals such as the Friday prayer, weddings, funerals or the ‘aïd el Kebir (i.e. Feast of the Sacrifice). For instance, a kaftan (i.e. traditional dress) is a must to wear to attend weddings, and many shops – mainly located in a specific street – are devoted to kaftan renting. Also, the bride has to wear five or six different dresses during the public evening of her wedding. Clothes were also at the core of debates. Informants discussed the legitimacy of hanging up a kaftan on the wall as a decorative item (cf. infra p. 147). Moroccan inhabitants also commented on women' scarves. According to Aziz, a Moroccan tourist guide, in the past, women wore a litham (i.e. a veil hiding the inferior part of women's face) while another veil covered the head and hair. Nowadays, women wear an Oriental scarf, and even sometimes a niqab (i.e. integral veil) even though these are not typically Moroccan. Moroccans, men and women, had their specific clothes, which respected religious principles but were also "moroccanised."
2.3.4.1.2. Intangible heritage
Many Moroccans mentioned what has changed in the medina, which mainly concerns the way of life. Informants linked this way of life to the Merinid period when, i n the 15 th century, "[t]housands of families took to the sea. In their retreat, these families came to fill our history, to
50 revive our culture, to alleviate our habits, to embellish our cities, to dress our rituals with tolerance and our every day life with well being. […] This micro civilisation was born from the encounter between Kairouan and Andalus on an Arab Berber field. It remains today only as a way of life, an ill assorted culture and traditions 'à vau l'eau ' among an elite walking for fortune beyond Fez. […] It [i.e. the micro civilisation] is over now. It is ruined because of the rural depopulation, and the lack of education. […] It is priceless, but it has disappeared" (Berrada, 2000: 65, my translation). As Abdelhay did, Moroccan inhabitants compared their heritage to the former empire of Al Andalus, the Cordoba mosque and the Alhambra in particular. Laïla, a Moroccan architect, rather connected the way of life with the Fassi bourgeoisie. "There is the bourgeois aspect of Fassi who are very proud of their culture. Fassi are famous for being refined, be it in their cuisine or in their clothing. It is a long time reputation, which was legitimate at a certain period of time, but which is less so now. But it remained because of the history of Fez. Now, Fassis content themselves with this past glory. And somehow, they are proud of it." Be it bourgeois or Andalus, this way of life has disappeared and many informants asserted that "things were better before." Electricity, neon lights and satellite dishes appeared in each house. As Sefroui (2006 [1954]: 234, my translation) writes, "our time is weirder and weirder. Nowadays young women are not like those of yesterday anymore. They lack reserve, they do not know about the sense of modesty. They ignore their modesty to obtain a temporary satisfaction. They prefer marrying young men without a brain they can rule just as they want." The past medina is then described as a place of mutual respect among ages, social classes, and populations; as a peaceful place full of spirituality where everybody went to the mosque on Fridays and wore their best white clothes and yellow shoes. Healthy inhabitants had donkeys and porters for their journeys in the medina . Many families had pigeons. Amal, a Moroccan landlady, explained that "breeding pigeons on the rooftop was a characteristic of Fassi houses. Before, in every big house, children had this passion. They liked breeding pigeons, exchanging them with neighbours. They liked the song of pigeons in the morning. Because pigeons, if you open their birdcage, they are free, but they come back in the evening. It is not like other birds. And pigeons like the people who breed them." Some Moroccans evoked senses in the description of these changes. Jawad regretted the gushing water in the streets from the fountain in the house to the fountains in the streets and mosques, passing by the open air piping in the streets. 42 "When I was a child, there were fountains
42 Water is a striking and recurring element in discourses about the medina. Rachid, a Moroccan architect, gave an overview of this association between water and the medina. "Water preceded the foundation of Fez, was important in its development, and is a modern day problem. The entire city is governed by water." He firstly underlined the location of the medina in a gap between the Saïss plain and the Sebou valley, the only way for water to go down from the Atlas Mountains. This hilly area is rich in water springs, water seepage, and ground water. Fez, or the city that never lacks water. Secondly, Rachid mentioned water is present in the fountains one may find in the streets, houses and religious
51 everywhere in the medina. But some times ago, the RADEEF 43 said they had no money anymore, and they cut the fountains. […] Now, there are no more fountains with running water, except two in the Talaa [i.e. one main street]. And Neijjarine [square]. These are the only ones remaining." Mohammed, a Moroccan inhabitant, said that sqaqi (i.e. mural fountains) were provided with lma beldiya (i.e. traditional water) from l’ayoun, tabi’i (i.e. fresh and pure water). But now, it is water from the State ( dula ). Jawad also cited sirens announcing the end of the fast day during Ramadan. A canon fire nowadays replaces them. According to Jawad, this canon fire is less efficient, as not everybody can hear it in the heart of the medina, by contrast to the sirens . Some Moroccans also evoked the possibility of walking in the medina blindfolded and of finding their way thanks to smells and sounds. The changes also relate to respect and security. Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, explained that, "in the 1940s and 1950s, the doors of houses were never closed. They were open all the time. And the garbage man came with his donkey, he entered the house, at 3 or 4 in the morning, took the rubbish and left. But it is not usual anymore to leave the door open, even during the day" because "there is no security at all" and even the neighbours steal. "Sometimes, during the day, one can see people on the roofs stealing a bicycle or a television." In terms of security precisely, in the past, the doors of the neighbourhoods and the medina were closed every evening. In neighbourhoods, "the biyat [i.e. guardians] closed in the evening and pushed the latch to open only to those whose voice he recognised and whose name he remembered. Monumental wooden doors at each opening in the city wall stalled the city to stabilise it from outside and forbade foreigners to disturb its intimacy at night" (Berrada, 2000: 66, my translation). Jawad, a Moroccan inhabitant, explained that under the colonial rule, peasants didn't have the right to live in the medina. After the 1957 Independence, they arrived in great numbers and after a while, there were not enough jobs left for them. As a consequence, those peasants "sit in the street
buildings. "You have to know that under the Merinid dynasty, the medina was provided with three kinds of water circuits: the water from the oued (river) for domestic tasks, spring water to drink, and a sewage disposal. And each house was connected to three circuits." This water system explains why people throw their rubbish close to fountains in the medina when there is no more water. "In their unconscious mind, the fountain, even if it doesn't work, its water will take rubbish away." Thirdly, Rachid linked the urban planning and the water network, for agricultural exploitations oriented the urban development. According to a quite famous hypothesis, the road network follows the former irrigation channels bringing water to the gardens and orchards located on the hill sides. The street network replaced the hydraulic system. The main streets, Talaa Kbira and Talaa Sghera, are located on the former main rivers, while the smaller and smaller streets match with the smaller and smaller diversions. "That's why there is no straight street in the medina." Houses replaced the plots of land. "The medina was built little by little, by capillarity, and without planning. " Finally, water constitutes a main topic in Fez, because of its scarcity and its lower quality. A recent documentary, "Hidden waters" by Joe Lukawski, tackles some issues such as the lack of water in public fountain cut, pollution and the building of a wastewater treatment plant. Also, several academic researches have been made (Ameur, 1987; Fejjal, 1991; Naciri, 2002). Madani (2003) dedicated a part of his Ph. D. dissertation to the medieval hydraulic system in Fez, and one part of the 1980 Master Plan was dedicated to water and hydrology in Fez. 43 Régie Autonome Intercommunale de Distribution d’Eau et d’Electricité de Fès – Inter communal and Autonomous Public Company for the Distribution of Water and Electricity in Fez.
52 the entire day" drinking (tea and alcohol), smoking (cigarette and hashish), looking at people, and they create a feeling of insecurity. 44 Jawad worked as a waiter in Boujloud, a neighbourhood located on the top of the medina, and lived in Zkak Rouah, a street located in the centre of the medina. He was sometimes afraid – and his mother even more so – when he had to come back at night. In many families, women did not move in the medina without a man or a group of women and children in the evening. In Moroccan discourses, the medina was safer before. Jawad also mentioned the arrival of satellite dishes in the medina landscape. He concluded, "a long time ago, it wasn't like now. There was charm in the medina. You couldn't see people fighting in the street. It was Hchouma [i.e. shameful ]." According to him, "it was better before." More than the disappearance of things, he deplored the fact that the qaïda (i.e. rules) are not respected anymore. The medina has however not completely changed, and what remains from its olden way of life is part of heritage. According to Abdelhay, a Moroccan inhabitant, the way of life makes the tradition of the medina. "Fez succeeded in what other cities couldn’t. Come on, the medina managed to keep a lot of its traditions and habits. Although it is open, it is as the same time a bit enclosed on itself. So we managed to keep a lot of things [such as] this proximity between people in the medina, be it in houses, in neighbourhoods, in shops. There is this proximity that gives life to the medina. There is human warmth in the medina." As such, the medina is still a lively place. Lotfi, a Moroccan who grew up in the medina but now lives in the New City, declared: "when I think of the medina, I think of the vivacity and liveliness in the old medina. I do not see houses, I do not see the city walls, I see people going for their shopping. To me, there is heritage as long as there is liveliness, people who go and come. Heritage is the presence of human beings and not what they have built. […] When I go to the old medina, I meet a lot of people. And people stop you in the street to give you a date or a fig even if they don't know you. And this is heritage." Food and music constitute specific categories of heritage because of their liveliness. Moroccans still consider tajine,45 couscous, and bastila 46 as part of their daily life. These traditional
44 Ahmed, a Moroccan guest house owner, had a striking discourse about security whose disappearing equates to the disappearance of human values. "When I say we, it is me as a Fassi Moroccan. I was born here, in this city. I know this city as it was, I know how people behaved. I remember the respect in our society and behaviours. […] We started to lose it more and more, because the rural exodus, people came to Fez, and occupied it, they were like Apache. […] We lived in a difficult system, as authorities had the control over life and the city. Authorities were really present. Family was in charge of education, school was in charge of education, authorities were in charge of education, but with the truncheon. People walking in the medina with swords in their back, they couldn't have done this in the 1980's, 1990's during Hassan II reign with the Minister of Interior, Basri. We have suffered from whatever is this concept of Human Rights. We do not have it. This culture is not ready to practise Human Rights. It is as if you asked a man wearing 56 to wear a 42 T shirt. But with the implementation of Human Rights, I think human values are vanishing. Authorities were doing their job, but now it is a period of resignation: resignation of school, resignation of parents, and resignation of authorities. They are looking at what's going on, but they don't move. They have the human rights stick; they have the Human Right associations. […] Insecurity we suffer in Fez, it is not only in Fez but everywhere. It is a social insecurity, established by Human Rights, because people are not afraid anymore." 45 Dish with stewed vegetables and meat.
53 dishes do not especially suffer from disappearance, except specific recipes and family secrets. Festivals, such as the culinary festival in Fez, and TV programmes, the Choumicha daily show for instance, rather promote the diversity and creativity of food than fight against its disappearance. To have an idea of cultural heritage in present day Morocco, Aziz, a Moroccan tourist guide, advised me to watch TV rather than to read books. In the musical realm, many festivals flourished during the last decade, promoting one kind of traditional music. Among others, we find the Gnawa festival in Essaouira, the Andalus Music Festival and the Sacred Music Festival in Fez. Issawa and other Sufi brotherhoods have left their private dhikr (i.e. evocation and repetition of the name of Allah) to give public performances. For instance, the Hamadcha brotherhood of Fez has its own website (http://www.hamadcha fez.com/ ), performs Sufi music and fairy evenings (during which musicians combine the telling of fairy tales and music) in ryad, shot a movie in 2010, participates in various festivals and meetings, and recorded audio CDs. One member wrote in the website (my translation) that "Morocco faces a process of globalisation which reduces traditional practices to the benefit of behaviours and activities from the West. In this context, brotherhoods such as the Hamadcha, have less and less space to express themselves, and they lose a bit more of their audience every day. Paradoxically, the news networks of tourism and shows (television, festivals), resulting themselves from the modernisation of Morocco, offer new spaces of expression and performance. In this context, the framework of their ceremonies has changed, but these new opportunities allow them to exist, to be paid for their music and to preserve their ancestral and amazing practices."
Moroccans mainly saw heritage when the item was old ( qdim ), beautiful ( zuin ), not used anymore in the case of āthar or still alive in the case of turāth and taqālīd , owned by the government ( Habous ), remaining the same (continuity), bygone or disappearing ("it was better before"), exceptional or unique, and representing the Moroccan identity and roots.
2.3.4.2. "Foreigners" and heritage
Me: How do you define cultural heritage? Gigi: "I would say it is what you find in only one country. It is part of this country; it is typical of this country. Heritage, it is buildings, culture too, for instance works of art. Heritage is authentic anyway, but it is not obligatory typical. Heritage may be inspired from another source. Here, you have the
46 Hot puff pastry filled with pigeons, almonds, onions and raisins.
54 Arab Andalus style, coming also from Spain." Me: But you said heritage is typical of a country. Gigi: "You find it only here. Because even if the Fassi style is from an Andalus inspiration, it was adapted to the needs of the country. And this is heritage. It is authentic in a way, but not original. It is not typical. Typical means you find it only there. For instance, you see, round huts, it is typical of Africa. After, I don't know, in Asian countries, I find they have mainly square houses, or rectangular on stilts. But the round hut, it is a typically African style." Me: So, if I say Moroccan heritage… Gigi: "I see the Hassan tower in Rabat. It is typical, traditional. No, not traditional, there are no towers. It is not a country of towers. They have minarets and defensive towers, but no monolithic tower as such. And the Great Mosque of Casa. It is also heritage, it is architecturally well proportioned. It is beautiful and it is well located. And heritage is also the kasbah, and Fassi houses. But heritage, it is more refined, more cultural I would say. But heritage may also be... I think the word doesn't only admit a cultural or artistic aspect. Heritage, it is also the population, cattle, agriculture. It belongs to heritage."
Bossuet (2005), in his study of a French medieval village, stresses that newcomers usually settle there because of the living environment. This environment attracts people who had no former link with the village or the heritage of the region. For instance, Benoit, a French guest house owner, appreciated Fez for its liveliness. "If the medina wasn't this set of such old houses, well, it would have no interest. Four monuments are not enough to constitute the soul of a city, and of a medina. I like Fez because it is not an empty shell, people are still living here. Not like Marrakech. Remove the sūq [i.e. market ] in Marrakech, remove all the guest houses and I wonder what remains." More generally, t he medina reminds foreigners the past way of life in Europe. Gigi took the example of religion that is still important in the everyday life of Moroccans. She compared it to what she had experienced in France when she was a child going to church every Sunday and noticing religious habits in everyday gestures. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, asserted, "it is the only medieval city of such proportions and so well preserved in North Africa. We can find traces of the past everywhere. And the way of life has hardly changed." At the same time, he said that "nothing is simple in the medina. When you come back from the supermarket, you have to walk 500 metres or more with the shopping bags. It is a different logistic. But that's why it is so charming here." Foreigners associated images of a former way of life with the medieval aspect of the medina – no cars in the medina, presence of work guilds and corporations, deep spirituality, human warmth.
55 They shared this image of immutability even if postcards, paintings and discourses prove the medina has changed a lot since the early 20 th century. 47 For instance, Simon, a French guest house owner, declared there was no house on the hill facing his house ten years ago and numerous foreigners and Moroccans mentioned the improvement of the water and electricity supplies. As a consequence, foreigners relate heritage to a certain kind of exoticism in time and space rather than to a remote past that their ancestors experienced. To foreigners, houses constitute an element of heritage because they represent the Arab Andalus style that does not exist in Europe. As Kate, an American guest house owner, explained, "here [i.e. in my house], things have not passed down that many generations, because it is a young house. But the features of Moroccan or Islamic architecture are all here." To recognise it, foreigners compared heritage in Fez with other kinds of heritage they know – Lascaux in France or the Egyptian pyramids – and to their perception of the environment. As Sarah, a French resident, declared, "I think I feel more the fact of living in a heritage here than in France. It is because of our knowledge . We know this city was founded so many years ago, so many centuries ago and traditions are still perpetuated, perpetrated, what is correct? Perpetuated in this city. You see the muleteer with the small cart. I think we are more sensitive to this heritage in everyday life." Foreigners connected this Moroccan heritage to several features and values, such as the identity of Morocco, and Fez, the specificity and the uniqueness of its heritage. As Gigi, a French guest house manager, voiced, "there is so much refinement, so much work. The contrast with Africa is so clear! When you come from Europe, you are used to visiting museums, to seeing works of art. You know what a culture is. In Black Africa, culture is very light. It is a very poor culture, what Chirac called primitive art. It is sober, it is simple. It doesn't mean it is ugly, but it is limited. While here, you have mathematics at the basis of almost everything. You have writing. You have sculpture and carving on wood, plaster, copper, bronze and so on. It is a huge wealth." In American guest house owner Kate's view, heritage is "where you come from. So it is your values, your cuisine and everything that defines you as a nation, as a tribe, as a group. It is how you define yourself and what you decide to pass on from generation to generation." Philippe, a French art historian managing a property agency in Fez , underlined the specificity of Fassi heritage. "The city of Fez is characterised by its architectural and geographical landscape , this bowl, these walls, these mausoleums. This city is full of holy places that emit something. In my opinion, there are vibrations in this city one cannot find anywhere else. And heritage is part of this. It is anchored in the city." He also raised the property issue. "Even if we [i.e. foreigners] buy houses here, this heritage remains Moroccan, even if we try to posses it. I mean we do not master it, really, we do not
47 Cf. appendix p. 326.
56 own it. Do you understand what I mean? Heritage remains, and we are only passing by. And even if we furnish and restore the house, it doesn't belong to us. It belongs to Morocco, its culture, its history, its time." Foreigners also associated heritage with history and traces of the past. In a French guest house owner’s view, "heritage speaks of history. An element of heritage is something that tells a story." David, an American resident, gave specific attention to the patina of things and wondered about which former state the house should be restored to. Emma, an Australian guest house owner, declared that she loved " around Seffarine square. And particularly you go around the back, and you see the guys shaping the knifes and using the wheel with their foot. The places where they're doing everything just like they were doing centuries ago." In its more intangible aspect, heritage is, according to Emma, "something that shows the way of life of the people, from centuries ago. […] And for me, that's like a cultural heritage, because that has been the way the women made the meal, grinding the spices for couscous or tajine . And I know that is a very simple thing, but for me, it is how they live their life." As such according to Ruth, a German guest house owner, heritage is "hidden. I would say cultural heritage is in the memory, in the soul, in the heart, sometimes in the actions of people." Other foreigners insisted on transmission. According to Philippe, the French art historian, "it is important for this heritage to last, because I think we cannot live, and we cannot go ahead without roots. I travel a lot, but I do not travel without roots, I know where I come from. I think if we cut somebody off from his roots, like a tree, he dies. It is the same if we cut a city from its past, its history. If Fassi living in the New City do not know where they come from, in my opinion, something is missing in their balance, in their life. And I think this past is important because of that, for stability, and to go ahead in the future. In order to project oneself, it is important to know where we come from. One has to know this city was important, was a capital, and one has to be proud of it." As a consequence, "there is also the need to restore people's minds. You have to do so, otherwise it [i.e. preservation] is only drops on a warm ground" Ruth whispered me. In the view of many foreigners, transmission and Moroccan heritage link to religion. On the one hand, they spoke of the atmosphere in the medina, distinct from the built heritage. Jean Pierre, a French guest house owner, explained, " you have various kinds of heritage. You have the spiritual heritage, which is impossible to hide: madrasa [i.e. Koranic school ], the Qaraouiyine mosque, and even the spirit of the medina. […] I feel the spirituality of the medina. And we are numerous to think like this. You feel an atmosphere in the medina. You feel that it is a believer environment, that there is something, a soul. And you see it physically with the built aspect [of heritage]: doors, houses in the medina."
57 On the other hand, many foreigners took the Sacred Music Festival as an example of a heritage event in Fez to spot the transmission through generations. As Philippe explained, "the Sacred Music Festival is held in Fez because it is a holy and sacred city. And now, it is part of the city heritage. But well, Arab Andalus music specific to the North and Fez lives without this festival. […] The Arab Andalus music has existed for centuries without this festival. And Moroccans appreciate it. They listen to it in specific places. People are totally passionate about what they are listening to, and they live this music. And it is a perfect music for the city of Fez. It is a refined music for a refined audience. It is not gnawa music 48 for instance. It is in no way similar. […] People continue to attend to performances, which are more frequent than we thought, and this music does not need tourists and guides. So it is a heritage, like architecture, that is old and that lasts, beyond festivals, activities, concerts here and there from time to time." In this context of transmission, foreigners presented crafts and skills as disappearing. They complained about the difficulty of finding skilled workers, they were affected in front of an old piece of mosaic or wood, they were shocked by the destruction of buildings or architectural decoration. As Kate, an American guest house owner, put it, "craft is dying. It is hard to find skilled people. Those things are disappearing. Zelij [i.e. mosaic ] is very difficult to find... Can you see the zelij there? It is damaged. If you see the part above it, the work is so fine, so fine. I interviewed I don't know, maybe 16 zelligi [i.e. tillers], and said 'Can you recreate this work with the same quality?' [They answered] 'No. These skills don't exist anymore, they died with my grandfather.' They've lost the skill, and it is impossible to get it back." This diminution of know how is due, according to French guest house manager Gigi, to a "loss of knowledge. It is also expensive to make, so they make it simple. And people do not know the meaning, some said 'Oh no, I do not like, I remove it and let's do something else.' So, something is lost, a pattern that had existed but won't be reproduced." Workers lost skills, but also the meaning of what they reproduce. "At first, they [i.e. workers] wanted to represent the cosmos. But later, it has been lost. Nowadays, it is only empirical. Workers do something because their forerunners made it, but the meaning behind it has been lost." Some foreigners insisted on affects linked to heritage. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, declared himself to be very critical of heritage in Fez, because "we are critical when we love something, when we value it. Otherwise, we are indifferent." As such, he urged his guests to visit the Glaoui and Mokri palaces before they definitively close, he complained about the impossibility of visiting the Dar Ba Mohammed Chergui (another palace) anymore. David, an American resident, didn’t hide his disappointment with both the aborted actions he initiated in the medina and the way
48 Moroccan music performed by the brotherhood of Gnawa in the South of Morocco. Essaouira hosts a famous festival of gnawa music.
58 foreigners baldy behave and inaccurately restore houses. Finally, few foreigners admitted they used the word "heritage." Amélie, a French guest house owner, declared she used the word "maybe when I speak with clients, but I'm not aware of it. It is possible I evoke it. I'm not sure. Maybe to introduce the medina, I say of it that it is an incredible heritage. Maybe when people ask me why I live in the medina of Fez, I answer it is a heritage of a rare density. Maybe at that moment I use it as a general term to present Fez." On the other hand, Frederica, a Spanish resident, had thought of her use of heritage. "Heritage is something abstract. I think it is an imported word. For instance, in our association, when you fill up a form to propose a project, even if you think about the real needs of people, you have to sell it in a different way, with words such as empowerment, heritage, and sustainable development. There is on one side the association that works with the real needs of people. And I'm on the other side, writing reports with big words. In Chaouen [i.e. Chefchaouen, a city in the north] for instance, they propose trips in the natural environment. And when I write the report, I say they learn the natural heritage of the region."
Foreigners took for granted the cultural and spiritual aspect of the medina. They first and foremost saw exoticism in heritage, with the meaning of what is unusual in time and space. Heritage is what is remote in time – but not linked to their ancestors' past –, what doesn't exist in the West but is still lively in Morocco, yet is disappearing. In this context, specificity and uniqueness, representativeness of architectural features, identity and roots, continuity in history and transmission, tradition and authenticity are among the values they underlined to define heritage. They also stressed the importance of knowledge in their appraisal of Moroccan heritage, and they sometimes put to the fore their affective link with heritage.
2.3.4.3. Members of institutions and heritage
"I asked myself whether the Old City might have inwardly changed during the twenty five years that I had been away from it. It still looked the same as before: ancient, weather beaten, withdrawn inside its walls. […] Fez had once been familiar to me, well known and yet full of inexhaustible secrets. In it I had experienced another world and another age, a world of the Middle Ages such as perhaps now no longer existed, an austere yet enticing world, outwardly poor but inwardly rich." Burckhardt (1992: 3 4)
59 Hassan is a member of the Inspection of Historical Monuments. Heritage is at the core of his daily work and really matters to him. He gave weight to definitions and categories of heritage. For instance, he distinguished tangible and intangible heritage in the medina. "When we speak of cultural heritage, we also speak of immaterial heritage, which is in our behaviour, in our way of talking. I wouldn't say in our way of life, it is a bit wider, a little more complicated. Cultural heritage is inside us in its immaterial aspect, but on the field in its material aspect, visible, tangible. Intangible heritage is inside us. It is also found in music and social practices, arts and traditions. Material is mostly buildings. And natural heritage is something different." Contrary to specific categories, a member of the UNESCO office in Rabat explained that "there are the definitions of UNESCO, established during the Mexico meeting. But in general, it is an intellectual, scientific, cultural product, a work of human genius." Catherine, a French architect working for the Millenium Challenge Corporation project, explained why funduk (i.e. caravanserai) in Fez constitute an element of heritage. "We speak of material heritage. It is the building itself , with its decoration, and its architecture, that composes a historical monument, a vector in the transmission of memory. In fact, it is the vector of a constructive memory because it is a building and of a functional memory with these craft traditions it hosts. We can say that both are linked in this structure: at the same time transmission of the memory of a practice, and the architectural, decorative and constructive memory. […] Their beauty, their authenticity, the fact that there a few changes in reality make of funduk a heritage. These buildings come from as such from the past. And I think old age is an important value. And the fact they include old materials, all this know how, this work." Catherine spotted a second main feature of heritage, namely "the fact they [i.e. funduk ] are located in a traditional environment. They link to their surrounding; they relate to this environment." A National School of Architecture (henceforth ENA) Facebook friend 49 underlined the importance of this environment. "The ' nzaha ' [i.e. picnic outside the city walls] still exists because/thanks to – according to anyone's view – the urban shape of the medina. People [i.e. rural migrants] didn't receive this practice from their ancestors, as they didn't live in the medina. But this practice is transmitted by the confined, cramped and labyrinthine space where they came to live, yielded by the need for open space, by the scarcity (if not absence) of spaces dedicated to leisure in the medina." Catherine finally insisted on the fact that "time and detachment are needed to consider a building as a heritage. Except that now, we consider there is a 20 th century heritage, and we are in
49 Among informants were Facebook friends of the National School of Architecture Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ArchitectureMaroc ). These friends were mainly students in architecture, architects, and individuals involved in construction or interior decoration, in Morocco or abroad.
60 the 21 th century. So that in 10 years time, we can consider a building is a heritage." As such, members of institutions and others professionals take the colonial heritage into account. Hassan asserted that heritage may also include "constructions from the early 20 th century that we have to consider as heritage. I give as examples of this colonial architecture between quotation marks, the Banque du Maroc, the cinema Bijou, the cinema Empire, the Central Post Office. They are part of the Moroccan heritage." The whole Fez "is a fortune, a treasure."
Pic. 5. Buildings of the Central Post Office (above) and the Banque du Maroc in the New City. Credit: M. Istasse
Some informants compared the medina to a body. Rachid, a Moroccan architect, stated that "the medina is heritage, the entire medina. You can take a house, alone. Maybe it is a heritage. But the strength of the medina is the 14.000 houses. What makes it a heritage is what I described, its architecture, its road network, this interlocking that results in several characteristics such as the
61 pedestrian area, the density of population, the homogeneity of the urban environment. Do you understand? The entirety makes the heritage. Problems occur when we remove a house, because it is like a human body. If I prick your finger, all your body reacts. This is how I understand things." In the ENA Facebook pages, Facebook friends wrote general remarks about a bygone past – "these neighbourhoods remind us of the great dynasties and the ancient art" – and compared it to "our lost Andalus, the Cordoba mosque, the Alhambra Alcazar in Sevilla." Facebook friends also evoked familial heritage – commenting on a picture: "look, it is our familial cemetery. In the foreground is the dome of my great grandfather" – and about decay. Tayyibi, the ENA Fez director, even made a state of heritage malfunctioning in one picture album. "1. a rich built heritage but in continuous decay and threatening ruin; 2. loss of knowledge and know how related to traditional materials and building techniques; 3. stakeholders not skilled for advice, help and expertise; 4. absence of preventive preservation; 5. arts of building and architectures internationally recognised but insufficiently documented." More than history, they evoked memory and identity. They stressed reasons "to be proud to belong to a country having such a wonderful heritage." In this context, "identity matters, especially for those who follow blindly the culture of the other and do not do enough of their own or do not try to understand the links that made the relationships between civilisations. What matters after all is to take the necessary measures to protect our heritage (and not authenticity) that witnesses our past (in its glorious as well as inglorious time)." Finally, some professionals spoke of heritage in affective terms. Hassan recalled his childhood in the medina and declared being nostalgic for that time. Also, he expressed fear about the medina being listed on the World Heritage in Danger List. The few UNESCO employees I met in Paris and Rabat mentioned the beauty, the charm and the magic of this bewitching medina. Mohammed Berrada (1986: 36 37, my translation), a university teacher, wrote in the journal Lamalif , "I go down in the street crowd, amazed as if it was the first time I visited you, as if my childhood was not confined in your folds. Where does this amazement come from which I thought my experience and scenes of travel and migration would have taken from me? Voices, shouts, looks go together well. That's how I read the faces that reappeared to me through the intimate deposit that memories blended with my deep being. […] Dense space, aged time by traditions and the presence of spoken memory... Although several aspects reveal that the image of Fez has changed: anxiety in the eyes, unavoidable misery for the eye, and numerous beggars. Near the Qaraouiyine, the sūq dlala [i.e. market dlala ]reveals the medina secret: misery and destitution. […] Fortunately, Fez, the real one, is in our hearts. In the past, when springtime arrived, we closed the shops and went for the nzaha [i.e. picnic ] in the gardens and orchards surrounding the city. But go and look at how they
62 cleared to build houses, carboard... Work was real and pleasure was an orgasm. The malhun,50 ô my lord, and the Andalus, the gnawa and aissawa evenings... […] Wandering in the streets of my childhood city, my feet do not get tired... Did I want to give my soul the illusion I could possess it? 'Fez, Fez, the memory similar to the woman we love and we cannot possess as such because we love her... So we enter in the game of eternal love, the pursuit of dancing and fleeing shadows. Slowly, we sink in its chaos.' This is what I thought when leaving the old medina."
Aside from the importance of definitions and categories, members of institutions referred to identity and memory, the anchorage in a specific environment, authenticity, beauty, the need to take distance and to consider the medina in its entirety, transmission, values to preserve, familial heritage, continuity in time, decay and disappearance. They also compared heritage to Andalusia and the medina to a living body.
Several remarks emerge from this overview of various appraisals of heritage in Fez. Moroccan inhabitants, foreigners and members of institutions at the same time differ and resemble each other in their appraisal and definition of heritage. They compare elements of heritage in Spain (Alhambra, Cordoba mosque or Al Andalus), France (Provence, Lascaux), Africa (Egypt), and Fez. They also stress the link between heritage and economy (heritage brings money and who has money can do what he wants with heritage) or the need of knowledge and distance to appraise heritage properly. M any informants mentioned continuity in time, continuity with similarity – transmission of "what has always been" – or continuity with the rupture with the past – decay, loss and disappearance. Informants aware of the temporal rupture most of the time spoke in terms of nostalgia for a "better past." In this temporal context, oldness – length in time – is of prime interest. Informants also related heritage with a specific location in space, that is to say the ubiquity of heritage in the medina or, on the contrary, its hidden aspect, and the link with a specific environment orienting the shape of heritage. Specificity, uniqueness, exceptionality are other oft mentioned features of heritage, as is its representativeness of the culture, the country, and Moroccan identity. The liveliness of heritage is another recurrent feature. Some informants compared heritage to a living body – which involves considering its entirety – and they emphasised the liveliness in the medina – inhabitants still live like before – and of the medina – the medina has a soul and an atmosphere. Informants also mentioned a link with spirituality. Finally, they mentioned the beauty of heritage and their affects.
50 Melodic poem inspired from Andalus music, urban sung poetry performed by men of craftsmen’s guilds.
63 2.4. Tourism in Morocco
Tourism has always swayed between seaside and cultural tourism, both attracting distinct kinds of tourists and requiring distinct infrastructures (Berriane, 2002). During the Protectorate, French authorities implemented cultural tourism in Morocco. They developed tour circuits with Moroccan or foreign tourism agencies. Prosper Ricard, a member of the Fine Arts Department, wrote tourism guides (the Blue Guide between 1919 and 1948) and promoted the development of tourism accommodations for tourists travelling on their own. In Fez, French authorities implemented a tour of Fez and the city walls by carriage. They improved the access to the medina with a 15 kilometres road around the city walls. They created sites, such as the Merinid tombs or the eponym hotel, for tourists and French people living there to get views over the medina. The Merinid tombs or the Boujloud gate 51 became symbolic images of the medina. Before the 1950s, the Moroccan Imperial Cities tour attracted more tourists than seaside resorts located in Oualidia or Moulay Bouselham. At that time, seaside tourism was geared toward internal and not international tourism. However, in the 1970s, seaside tourism, supported by public authorities, supplanted cultural tourism. Mass and residential tourism replaced the mobile cultural tours, and tour operators, such as the Club Méditerranée , proposed organised stays in seaside resorts and village clubs. At the end of the 1970s, the tourism map of Morocco looked like main seaside resorts and Imperial cities linked by roads. In the late 1990s, local and private initiatives extended public ones to develop mountain and desert tourism – recently joined by rural tourism – in the South. Since then, cultural and seaside tourism, pushed by a growing international tourism, have proposed more and more diverse options such as horse riding in the countryside, trekking in the desert, sailing, golf, water cures or marinas. In the 1960s, King Hassan II made tourism into an essential sector in the successive triennial Development Plans. The Government created tools, such as Commissions, and ordered studies to control and direct tourism development, and it encouraged the private sector to follow the trend. Although the Government has later limited its economic investment in tourism development, tourism hasn't left the political agenda. On January 10 th 2010, King Mohammed VI ratified a Ministerial strategy and programme, "Vision 2010," which aimed to welcome 10 million tourists in 2010, to create 600,000 jobs, and to offer as much as 230,000 beds for tourists in various accommodations. The programme gathered public and private investors to engage in concrete actions such as planning investments and starting building sites. For instance, the Plan Azur
51 Despite being a symbol, the Boujloud gate was inaugurated by Lyautey in 1915. It firstly received the name of Bab Medjless, as the Muslim council requested, before becoming the now famous Bab Boujloud.
64 implemented the construction of six seaside resorts, and many cities were provided a Regional Tourism Development Plan (PDRT) aiming at improving each destination with regards to its opportunities and needs. In 2002, tourism brought 21,6 billion Dh (1,94 billion €) to Morocco, for 22,4 billion Dh (2 billion €) brought by migrants living abroad. In 2011, tourism benefices reached 59 billion Dh (5,3 billion €) while Moroccan migrants brought 58 billion Dh (5,2 billion €). On November 30 th 2010, the Ministry of Tourism presented the extension of "Vision 2010" with "Vision 2020", aiming to welcome 20 million tourists in 2020, and focusing on regional promotion of tourism based on authenticity, historical depth, diversity, quality and sustainability. In the academic area, scholars use the notion of tourism development (Saigh Bousta and Tebbaa, 2005; Bakhella, 2008) to investigate the changes initiated by public and private actors and the link between foreign investments and tourism development. Kurzac Souali (2007) asserts that private actors are the most active in the preservation of Moroccan medina. Porter (2001) assigns the active role of private owners to the change in the political regime between Hassan II and Mohammed VI. Hassan II, the former king, undertook numerous restoration works in Morocco, including in Fez. Among others, he called for the listing of the medina as a World Heritage site and he re opened the religious educational system at the Qaraouiyine mosque. In so doing, he aimed to promote Islam as the main image of the country, and himself as the Commander of the believers. Mohammed VI, the current king, promotes culture over religion, for culture – more than religion – attracts private actors in the tourism sector. This political and economic agenda geared toward private actors has been seen as the royal will to reinforce the private sector in Morocco, or reducing the Islamic image of the country, or as a proof of royal interest in various fields.
2.4.1. Tourism in Fez
Two institutions are in charge of the promotion and development of tourism in Morocco, the Ministry of Tourism and its local delegations, and the Tourism Regional Council 52 (henceforth CRT). Contrary to permanent civil servants appointed by the State working at the Ministry of Tourism, elected members also compose CRT. The latter oversees and implements the Tourism Development Regional Plan (PDRT) that started in November 2005 in Fez. It has a threefold goal. By 2015, Fez should become a city break, a destination for conferences and seminars, and a full fledged tourism destination – and not a one day visit city included into a larger trip. In other words, CRT encourages economic, cultural and tourism investments by developing the airport, creating new activities, improving tourist accommodations and reception capacities, training professional
52 There is a CRT in each region.
65 workers, and participating in international tourism fairs and shows. In this context, the medina has become a "leading resource." The CRT website (http://visitfes.org/) provides information to facilitate investments, such as a professional directory, information about culture and history of Fez and the region, key tourism figures published monthly by the Ministry of Tourism, a press book, and information on what to do and see – accommodation and restaurants, transportation, sport and discovery, well being, nightclubbing, tourism circuits, craft and art. Also, two kinds of tourist accommodations blossomed, both framed by a specific institution. On the one hand, guest houses started developing in Marrakech in the 1960s when pioneers – mainly hippies, artists and couturiers – bought houses in the medina – Yves Saint Laurent acquired the Jardin Majorelle in 1967. Essaouira hosted two celebrities, Orson Welles in the 1950s and Jimmy Hendrix in 1969. This trend became a phenomenon in the 1990s, when purchases exploded. In 2012, there were nearly 700 guest houses in Marrakech and even more houses owned by foreigners. With this "ryad phenomenon" (Kurzac Souali, 2007), the word "ryad" became part of everyday life and acquired three different meanings. The media used it to refer to any house located in a medina in order to attract buyers, foreigners linked it to Orientalism and exoticism in their imaginary (Saigh Bousta, 2004), and Moroccans made it any house owned by a foreigner and any tourist accommodation in the medina. In the late 1990s, the wave reached Fez and other Moroccan cities such as Meknes or Rabat. The first guest house, La Maison Bleue, opened in 1999 and was Moroccan owned. A second Moroccan owned guest house opened the same year, followed by a French owned guest house, the Riad al Bartal. In December 2012, the Regional Association of Guest Houses (henceforth ARMH) listed 63 official guest houses and 16 locations de meublé.53 Out of the 63 guest houses, 34 are Moroccan owned. However, the development of tourist accommodation in the medina competed neither with its development in Marrakech nor with hotels in the New City. In 2008, out of the 7,224 beds in Fez, only 850 were located in the medina. 54 Although the tourism value of the city lies in the "heritage richness of the medina" and its "way of life inherited from the past and integrated in the urban fabric," this resource is underexploited according to the Ministry of Tourisms (Europraxis, 2003). The "fairly new" concept of guest house attracts tourists with a high buying power and is still limited. The ARMH is responsible for guest houses in Fez. A double office – one Moroccan, one foreign – of elected members heads this association whose official document, the Charter of Quality, compels owners to respect very general principles such as to obtain all the administrative
53 This category of tourist accommodation, specific to Fez, allows owners to welcome tourists if they have less than five bedrooms. 54 http://www.tourisme.gov.ma/francais/5 Tourisme chiffres/CapaciteHoteliere.htm
66 authorisations, to respect the Working Code, to declare employees to the CNSS, 55 to pay the employees more than the SMIG, 56 to subscribe to all the needed insurances, not to embezzle clients or employees from other guest houses, not to denigrate other members, not to practise dumping, to support ARMH decisions, to promote Fez and its region in all places and circumstances, to study carefully each client request carefully, to keep the reservation as simple as possible and conform to the initial terms, to present pictures of the house fitting with reality on their website, and to promote a tourism of quality participating in the social and economic development of Morocco. ARMH for its part commits to promote and defend official guest houses satisfying the Charter. For instance, the association fought to diminish by 15 Dh the 30 Dh communal tourist tax that guest houses of the second category had to pay per host and by the day. ARMH also helps newcomers to succeed in the process of opening a guest house and gives advice in case of conflict between owners. The association is however criticised for being useless (owners have to pay subscription fees but they hardly meet or get feedback), for being rotten at its head (members of the office are rich, powerful, and long term settled guest house owners), and for a lack of communication. On the other hand, Ziyarates 57 is a totally groundbreaking and, at that time of its inception, a unique initiative of home stays in Morocco. S ince June 2007, tourists can stay in Moroccan families. On the website, 58 the spirit of Ziyarates is described as an opportunity "to visit Fez in a different way" – ziyara means visit in Arabic. Ziyarates presents itself as an "original concept linking tourism and human development and seeking to present Fez under its most authentic and unattainable aspect: the spiritual Fez." If 10 houses composed the first batch, this number reached 30 in 2008, and 26 at the end of 2011 (4 houses have been dismissed for not satisfying the rules). The project is usually attributed to Laila Skalli, an architect and (at that time) director of the development of the medina section at the Regional Tourism Council. After she submitted the project to the UNDP in 2005, Skalli gathered several partners with precise functions. The Fez Boulemane Region Wilaya (District) funded the management, the Fez Medina baladiya (Municipality) undertook improvement and restoration works, CRT held and promoted the project and controlled its legal framework, the Union des Associations et Amicales humanitaires de la Médina de Fès (Union of Humanitarian Associations of Fez Medina) was in charge of managing and centralising reservations, and the Agence de Développement Social (Social Development Agency) trained families and created a common fund. In 2007, this partnership led to the creation of the Association
55 Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale – National Body for Social Insurance. 56 Salaire Minimum Interprofessionnel de Croissance – Guaranteed Minimum Wage. 57 Cf. appendix p. 227 for the official documents. 58 http://www.ziyaratesfes.com/
67 des familles (Ziyarates families Association) and of the label "Ziyarates Fez" composed of criteria, rules and charters. In order to become a Ziyarates home stay, owners must first conform to social and patrimonial criteria. Among other such criteria we find the following: being Moroccan, owning the house, having low income, having a patio and quality heritage features such as a wood halqa (i.e. square opening to the sky at the top of the house above the central courtyard) or carved and/or painted plaster, and overall for the house to not feature too many modern alterations. Secondly, they have to conform to several rules related to general conditions, such as having at least two individual bedrooms and/or a familial one with a permanent hot water supply, providing for the night and breakfast, maintaining a certain standard of comfort, having an equipped kitchen and Western bathrooms, providing information about cultural activities, as well as following training provided by university teachers and professionals of the tourism sector. The quality charter defines what a home stay is. "The home stay is an accommodation necessarily owned by a Moroccan citizen and intended to complement traditional tourist accommodations" such as hotels and guest houses. It also describes how to become a member of Ziyarates and to receive the label and what the rates should be. Finally, the ethical charter is geared toward guests. It insists on the quality and sustainability of the programme, the integrated action helping underprivileged inhabitants and promoting a tourism action based on culture and spirituality. The ethical charter also stresses the safeguard of heritage and the respect of cultural diversity as the encounter of different cultures may cause astonishment and misunderstanding. It asks tourists to respect the family and the local traditions – to avoid some behaviours – as well as to encourage the carriers of Fassi culture to remain in the medina. Moroccans commented on the development of tourist accommodations. They felt concerned with what happens in these houses. "Things are said to occur in guest houses, unorthodox and questionable things," said Saïd, a member of the Urban Agency. Moroccan owners hardly mentioned sexual and gay tourism, except to condemn it or to criticise another guest house. Adbu, a Moroccan guest house owner, said he has "never seen that. But according to the media, those things happen in Marrakech and Agadir. I respect all the sex [i.e. sexual orientations], I respect everybody. I don't mind, I don't mind people who feel good about themselves. Because it is democracy. But if your freedom disturbs the freedom of others, freedom then has some limits." Many Moroccans also talked about the consequences of tourist accommodations on the preservation of the medina. According to Fettah, another Moroccan guest house owner, public authorities do not fulfil their tasks and responsibilities. As a consequence, "the tourism dynamic is the only one, according to me, efficient enough to keep buildings and life in the medina. The wave
68 of guest houses has proved to be the most efficient movement, because it brings viable solutions to the restoration of the medina. Tourists come to see the medina and stay in it. And this is new. Before, tourists came, walked in one of the main street with a guide, went to some bazaar, dived a bit into the medina, and then returned to their hotel located out of the city walls. […] And one positive aspect of the guest house movement is that the medina is les crowded because houses inhabited by several families have been sold." Abdelhay promoted the Ziyarates programme over guest houses because Moroccan inhabitants know better the complexity of the medina and how to preserve it.
69 3. Six main informants
To frame the abounding experience of houses I intend to describe, I follow six main informants. During the fieldwork, I interviewed many informants (cf. Informants p. 316 for a list) and I met even more of them in Morocco, mainly in Fez and Rabat, in France (Paris), and in Belgium. I have however decided to focus on six main informants in this dissertation. Marcel Griaule in Dieu d'eau. Entretiens avec Ogotemmêli ( Conversations with Ogotemmêli: An Introdution to Dogon Religious Ideas , first published in 1948 ) reveals the deep structure of Dogon sacred thinking on the basis of his main informant, Ogotemmêli. Vincent Crapanzano also chooses one informant, Tuhami, a Moroccan tiller whose daily life Crapanzano writes about from an ethnographic perspective in the eponymous book, Tuhami, Portrait of a Moroccan (1980). Favret Saada (1977) follows only a few informants in her study of sorcery in the Norman countryside, as Foote Whyte (1993 [1943]) does with the members of a gang in Boston. The writings of these scholars, not least among famous anthropologists, raised criticisms. Besides ethical issues, we find questions of truth and representativeness. How could one man – not to mention the male bias – hold the knowledge of one human group – not to mention a whole society? I chose six main informants because some informants give one more food for thought than others. Also, it is easier to become intimate with some people – which is of prime importance in the investigation of the physical engagement with materiality, of senses and affects. I spent a lot of time with these six informants, sharing and attending moments of their daily life. In addition to formal interviews, I had many informal discussions with them, which I didn't record as I took notes – key words, mostly – during the discussion or right afterwards, and our many meetings allowed at some point to go beyond the usual first encounter, façade discourse. The six informants I present in this part are not statistically representative. Two of them are foreigners, three of them own a tourist accommodation, one of them is a woman, one of them works in an institution in charge of cultural heritage in Fez. Also, they barely know each other and it is I who actually introduced some of them to one another. TAs such, these six informants do not hold or reveal the truth, nor do they sum up all the relations one may have with houses and heritage. They are rather exemplary or typical – the Weberian ideal type – of the diversity in the profiles of actors engaged with houses and heritage in Fez, and I took them as a basis to explore and to think these engagements.
70 3.1. Jawad 59
Jawad was born in the medina in 1976 77 and has never left Morocco. Holding a high school degree, he works as a hairdresser and manages his own saloon in the kasbah Boujloud located in front of the eponym medina gates. Before becoming his own boss, he worked as a waiter in various restaurants. During my fieldwork, he also kept an eye on a house in restoration and worked in a guest house as an employee – after I advised the owner to employ him. The youngest son of 6 children, he has lived since 2001 with his parents, who are retired, and his sister, an unmarried primary teacher, in a house of 120 square meters in the same kasbah. The house was built in the second half of the 20 th century out of concrete and cement. Beforehand, they had lived in a flat in the Guerniz neighbourhood, but the three rooms were too small for their 8 family members. So they moved to a house in Skak el Bral, a street at the core of the medina, before buying the house they currently occupy in the kasbah. Jawad welcomed me during three months in that house, which I describe and picture in the following (cf. infra p. 88). He does not know any of the other informants, while I mentioned them often during our conversations.
3.2. Abdelhay
Abdelhay is Moroccan, was born in the medina about 40 years ago, and still lives in the familial house with his mother and two nieces. The youngest son of the family, he is not married and he takes care of the familial agricultural lands near Meknes. As an additional income, he hosts tourists in the context of the Ziyarates home stay programme. He is also the secretary of the Family Association of the same programme – this latter activity being unpaid. I introduced him to Gigi and they visited each other's house. The familial house was built in the 18 th century on former orchards. In the street, many buildings (houses, zawiya – i.e. Muslim religious building) belonged to his family. Nowadays, they only own the ground floor of the family house. He explained this loss by the fact that "[b]efore, extended families inhabited houses in Fez; parents, children, grand children and so on." However now, "there is this trend to go to the New City." Before he heard about the Ziyarates programme,
59 I faced the issue of the anonymity of its components. I worked with tourist accommodation owners who are concerned with competition. I also worked with members of institutions who didn’t want to spread their ideas and opinions. Legal issues and corruption also concern tourist accommodation owners and members of institutions as well as Moroccan residents. Writing a name and even giving some information was not a naïve act. In the following, all the informants have a nickname, except those having an administrative responsibility after I asked them if they saw any problem in having their name mentioned. Hassan is the only exception, as he wanted no information about his identity or his specific work to be mentioned.
71 "there were temptations [to sell the house and to buy a flat in the New City], because property prices were attractive. And I think everybody was tempted at some point, because prices were attractive. But we never yielded to this temptation; luckily we never yielded to it. And Ziyarates helped keeping the house. […] So finally we made the choice to stay in the medina, in the familial house […] because we are used to living in the medina. We prefer this way of life."
Pic. 6. Abdelhay’s living room. Credit: M. Istasse
3.3. Fettah
Fettah is Moroccan, is aged of 53 years old, and owns a guest house. He was trained in linguistics but introduces himself as "a craftsman who overwhelmed his experience to inscribe myself in a universal movement. I opened myself to the world. I'm not a businessman but I have to be one in order to preserve my point of view. I'm a dreaming aesthete." This artistic quality goes back in time, for members of his family took part in the Qaraouyine's building and later improvements. His travels helped him to open up to the world. He lived in France and the UK, both countries in which he got married and had children. He came back to his native medina in 1997 and bought a house. He nowadays manages 3000 square meters split into four houses. Two houses belong to members of his former French family, one is a guest house and the last is under work. Houses date from various periods. One is from the 17 th century, two from the 18 th , and one (the guest house) from the 20 th century.
72 Pic.7. Swimming pool and inside garden in Fettah’s house. Credit: M. Istasse
"When I came back in 1997, Fez was like a mosaic.60 All the pieces were there but fragmented. I'm a tile settler who started to gather the pieces." It began with the creation of Fez Hadara in 1997. In Ibn Khaldoun's typology, hadara means "urban people," in opposition to bedoun , "people from the countryside." "I was saying Fez had to become a city again, not a dormitory where peasants would come to sleep. Fez is a civilisation, not the countryside." He explained he "intended to use my house as a cultural place with Fez Hadara . Most events were free and as long as it was free, people came. But when it started to take a commercial form, when people had to pay fees, they stopped coming. So, I had to abandon the concept after a few years, because I couldn't make a living from it." In 2001, he founded the association Needa Fez (literally, the Friends of Fez), which lasted 3 years and gave him "a voice that is heard in the medina." The association gathered people from different languages, nationalities, trainings and responsibilities in the medina to debate issues related to the medina. The association was "driven into the ground from the inside by one of its members" who used it to face and master another rising association involved in culture, Fes Saïss. Finally, he opened a guest house in 2005, named Al Kantara (i.e. the bridge).
60 "In a mosaic, and especially in the Muslim mosaic, each piece has a name, a shape, and a specific role in a very logical and precise geometrical layout. Nothing is left to chance. In the medina, I think everything changed after the independence, after the Fassi exodus to more thriving cities, the neglect of culture, the move of administrations, of commercial activities, of crafts and even of the Qaraouiyine university, the central piece of the mosaic. There is a master piece in every mosaic, a unique piece around which all the pieces revolve. In Fez medina, the Qaraouyine was that piece".
73 The medina was also a "dormitory town, a sleeping city, a rubbish dump." As elites had left, poor inhabitants were sleeping there and tourists only spent a few hours in the medina. It has changed since then. The medina is more dynamic because craftspeople and shopkeepers come and go to work there, foreigners and members of administrations restore it, and tourists visit it. Fez is also a "city of light covered by dust. I do not pretend to light it again but to remove a bit of dust." And, last but not least, Moroccans have to inhabit the medina, unlike what has happened in Marrakech. "The restoration of the medina should come from inhabitants, from the heart, and not from the outside."
3.4. Gigi
Pic. 8. Gigi’s patio. Credit: M. Istasse
A French woman of about 60 years old, Gigi manages a middle size (about 300 square metres) guest house. She has a beautician diploma and she is very interested in astrology. She practises a humanist – and not an esoteric – astrology in order to understand – and not to predict – what happens to human beings. Her family lives in France and she arrived alone in Fez in 2005 to manage her cousin and business partner's guest house. She had just come back from 20 years living in the Ivory Coast and didn't want to stay in France. She took the opportunity of Fez to leave France but without having really chosen the destination. She knows Fettah as they share an economic activity in tourism, and Abdelhay as I introduced each other.
74 3.5. David
Pic. 9. Ground floor of David’s private house (left) and wall he had redone in his street (right). Credit: M. Istasse
David is American, over 50 and single. He is the director of the Arabic Language Institute of Fez (ALIF). He arrived in Fez in 1996, bought a house in the medina – he is said to be the first foreigner to have settled there – and has purchased several more since then. When I did my fieldwork, he owned five houses: his main house, which has being under restoration for more than 19 years, a restored house rented to tourists, a house close to a mosque, and two ruins. He mentioned various reasons for these purchases. He bought some because he fell in love with them, for the atmosphere they emit and not their size or their decoration. He saved other houses: he bought a ruin because the possible owner had a project that would have spoiled the view over the medina. Ruins are one of his main preoccupations, as those empty houses are threatened with collapse and are robbed. He has dedicated one website (http://www.houseinfez.com ) to providing information on the basis of his own experience, for those wanting to visit the city but also to buy and to restore a house in the medina. He is a kind of gatekeeper for whoever wants to buy a house, mostly among the English speaking community. Most of my Anglophone informants mentioned the importance, or at least the intervention, of David in their purchase and/or restoration. "I had no intention to buy a house. But I met David Amster. Everybody here knows David one way or another," declared Emma,
75 an Australian tourist accommodation owner. During the early 2000s, he wanted "to show people it is possible to do it [i.e. to buy a house and live in it for cheap.]" So, he "encouraged," "convinced," "persuaded" foreigners to buy a house in the medina. He described it like his "mission" and himself like a "missionary." He encouraged people to live in the medina because of the importance to preserve it. For instance, he salvaged the big wooden doors of an old house in Rabat, persuaded friends to buy the house the doors came from, and replaced the doors in their proper original location. Since 2008, he has been less active and repeatedly said that investment into the medina was a myth. He now advises people to live 6 months in the medina before buying a house, because life is special there and does not suit to everybody. He still visits houses when asked, continues to slowly restore his house, and gives advice to newcomers from time to time. Also, he had been very active in leading projects and was part of Needa Fez. However, when he saw that Moroccans didn't follow his actions, that they tried to put a spoke in his wheels, and that Fettah and him didn't see eye to eye as far as preservation was concerned, he decided to take a hiatus in his restorationisit’s activity. He said he was tired and needed to take some distance before coming back to action. In 2006, David initiated the creation of Fez Ryads , a renting agency. He had been undertaking works in the medina for some year and had a team of building workers. Also, he wanted to undertake works on a larger scale. To gather money, he came up with the idea of a renting agency, whose part of the profits would help paying for the works and the workers. Since 2007, Fez Ryads is managed by an Australian woman, Helen. The renting agency has a website (http://www.fez ryads.com/ ) regrouping several guest houses and houses for rent as well as information about Fez and tips as to how to make a trip a success. Helen takes 10% commission on every reservation, of which 2% is dedicated to restoration projects in the medina. Until now, 11 fountains and the window of a Koranic school have been restored, some streets cleaned, and a garden developed, thanks to this fund.
3.6. Hassan
Hassan is about 40 years old. He was born and grew up in the medina but is now living in the New City. He has been trained as an archaeologist and a curator. Since 1993, he works at the Inspection of Historical Monuments of the Fez Boulemane region. He has also taught at the OFPPT (Office de la Formation Professionnelle et de la Promotion du Travail – Office for Vocational Training and Work Promotion) for 14 years and at the Fez antenna of the National School of Architecture. Finally, he has written several books and articles about Fez.61 Hassan works with the
61 To remain his identity anonymous, I mention neither any of his writings nor his status at the Inspection.
76 official documents and rules related to cultural heritage but he considers studies and investigations about the medina to be reference documents. For instance, the book written by Revault, Amahan and Golvin about architecture in Fez "is a sort of inventory. Those studies have a peculiar value. They reinforce the protection and promotion files. Every study added to the architectural or heritage descriptions of the city has added value. And it becomes a reference, because changes are permanent in the medina: maybe the building we see now will be different in 10 years. But the document is there and it doesn't change." Finally, Hassan praised the politics enacted during the Protectorate. "They did a wonderful work during the Protectorate. It contributed to the preservation of the urban fabric." He underlined that "experiments" had been conducted in Morocco in the field of heritage before being implemented in France.
77 4. How to engage with the materiality of houses?
4.1. A first glimpse at the houses in Fez
What is it to live in a World Heritage site? I dedicate this section to the daily life of one element of heritage, namely houses located in the Fez medina, or, in other words, to the description of their (hi)story beyond the official heritage discourse. Although they are labelled as both national and World Heritage for their location in the medina, houses do not benefit from a uniform recognition as cultural heritage among their inhabitants. However, houses are a privileged and central location to investigate the daily life of and the engagements with an element of heritage. Firstly, they constitute a nub, a meeting point – not an ending point – of numerous components. Among these components we find human beings – Moroccan and foreign inhabitants, tourists, experts and members of institutions –, tangible and intangible objects – furniture, rules, (hi)stories – and systems (arrangements, schemes) – conflicts, restoration works. All of them are involved in the daily life of/in/with houses. In this section, I explore the components meeting in houses, the networks that are formed around the house, the surprises that houses provide. Secondly, houses are central because inhabitants fervently talk about and act in the house they inhabit, and because inhabitants and members of institutions enact formal and informal rules related to houses. Finally, houses are at the core of an abundant literature written by members of institutions, scholars and novelists. In point of fact, Brumann (2009b) asserts that cities are places where numerous documents of all kinds may be found, and more particularly historical and visual sources. Before coming to Fez, many foreigners, be they tourists or residents, have read about houses in Morocco or have seen these houses in movies, television documentaries or coffee table books. They then have an idea of what they are going to see. Before going to his/her field, an anthropologist usually reads about his/her topic, as I did. These readings constitute the first approach I had of houses in Fez. As a consequence, I start this investigation of houses with an appraisal through the academic literature. I begin by presenting the general paradigm within which the description of North African houses is generally inscribed, namely the Islamic city paradigm. Although no contemporary scholar clearly claims to include his/her work within this paradigm, it still pervades many academic studies about architecture and cities in North Africa. I then describe the structure and the symbolism of these houses. I finish with distancing myself from the academic model of a unique North African house to present the complexity of houses in Fez.
78 4.1.1. The Islamic city paradigm
During the French Protectorate, numerous scholars (Marçais, 1928; Le Tourneau, 1949; Berque, 1953) took Fez as the model of an Islamic city in North Africa, as Damascus and Alep were models in the Middle East. According to Raymond (1994: 3), this paradigm is a "French affair" developed by scholars of the school of Algiers and the school of Damascus. It was partly due to the fact that there were only two important Moroccan cities in the early 20 th century: Fez, with 90.000 inhabitants, and Marrakech, with 70.000 inhabitants. Scholars in this paradigm follow three main approaches to study North African cities. According to the first, Islam totally conditions what happens in a Muslim city. Some scholars try to find and list the specificities Islam brings to Islamic cities. Among them, Marçais (1928) defines Islam as an urban religion brought by nomads and bringing religious belief, laws and organisational principles. Abu Lughod (1987) scrutinises the forces producing cities. Alongside climate and technique, she points out religious forces. For instance, the "legal system, rather than imposing general regulations over land uses of various types in various places, left to the litigation of neighbours the detailed adjudication of mutual rights over space and use" (Abu Lughod, id.: 172). These mutual rights take the Koran as their basis. Other scholars defend the idea that Islamic cities lack political institutions and municipal organisation. In their view, Islamic cities are non cities. They stress the absence of autonomous and formally organised institutions and they claim Islamic cities are mainly economic settlements whose neighbourhoods are ethnically specialised, or gather members of a same guild or a same family. Hassan Ibn Mohammed el Fasi el Wazzan, or Leo Africanus, already adopted this kind of presentation of Fez in the 15 th century. Scholars then focus on the centrality of religious and economic institutions and buildings – the study of Sefrou’s sūq (i.e. market) by Geertz (1979) is one example. They also refer to the notions of order and disorder, and favour comparison with other cities, be they antique or medieval cities. For instance, Raftani and Radoine (2008) compare the structure of hammam (i.e. public bath) in Fez and Volubilis (a roman site located 50 kilometres from Fez) and its general inscription in the Mediterranean world. The last approach consists in listing the specific features of Islamic cities, that is to say the mosque, the sūq (i.e. market), the public bath, and the division in neighbourhoods. Idrissi Janati (2002) describes Fez medina from the jiha (i.e. main neighbourhood) down to the derb (i.e. street) with the hawma (i.e. neighbourhood) as the main stage located in the middle. Islamic cities also developed according to a radio concentric distribution of economic activities and residential areas. The main mosque and the central market constitute the centre linked to the gates by the main
79 streets. Funduk (i.e. storage buildings and hotel for merchants) are located along these streets and close to the gates. Residential areas are located at the city’s periphery and are connected to the centre by narrow streets and dead ends. The first criticisms of the Islamic city paradigm emerged after the 1960s in the English speaking academy (Lapidus, 1984 [1967]; Eickelman, 1974; Abu Lughod, 1987). Scholars criticised the Orientalist and essentialist ideas that the paradigm carried, the generalisations from too little and too specific case studies, and the focus on particular periods. For instance, Lapidus (id.) highlights the historical character of these cities against their timeless conception. Scholars also claim that Islam is "not the only cause of urban form but is a crucial contributing factor in shaping cities" (Abu Lughod, id.: 162). They then propose to talk of Oriental – and not Islamic – cities. Some Moroccan elites also discuss the images of and about Fez produced by foreign scholars and journalists. In their view, images of Fez as a magic and majestic city out of time and space are superficial and wrong, for the short stay of foreigners in the city scarcely allows discovering its mysteries and complexity. "What moves, what exists does not strike the foreign eye" (Amahan, 1986: 40). Foreigners omit the qualitative changes that deeply shaped the medina and they mythologise the immobility of the architecture to the detriment of the mobile nature of humans. Moroccan intellectuals then qualify the foreign description of Fez as an act of voyeurism, of violence, of rape. However, conceptions related to the Islamic city paradigm lasted through time and survived to criticisms in the academic literature – among others are Barrou (2005) and El Idrissi (2010). Bianca (1980b), a UNESCO expert, presents Fez as the model of an Islamic city characterised by a particular mix between Andalus art and Sahara crafts. Kurzac Souali (2007) defines the medina as "a specific urban place" with a structuring religious trace, as a specific urban fabric, as an introvert domestic space and as a place of production of cultural and symbolic values such as pervasive religiosity or familial intimacy. I distance myself from this paradigm while I agree with some of the urban characteristics it spotted. The concentric structure of the medina with the main mosque and market at its centre and residential area all around it hasn’t fundamentally changed since the early 20 th century. However, French authorities implemented specific institutions in charge of the city and neighbourhoods are not organised according to an ethnic or familial scheme anymore. Finally, more than in the structure and features of the medina, I have interest in houses.
80 4.1.2. North African houses
Scholars have long been interested in houses in North Africa, in Morocco and in Fez. Their writings address several topics such as the restoration of a particular house (Touri, Hassani and Barbato, 1999), a house from a specific period (Maslow and Terrasse, 1936), houses approached from an historic and architectural stance (Gallotti, 1926; Revault, Golvin and Amahan, 1985, 1989 and 1992), the relation between houses and religion in Fez (Burckhardt, 1992 [1960]) or in North Africa (Zouilai, 1990), or the architectural regulating layouts and techniques (Paccard, 1981), the origins of patio houses in Morocco after the Roman house (Gallotti, id.) or the Berber tent (Zouilai, 1990). According to Raymond (1994), these descriptions of the traditional North African house present the courtyard house as a unique model and generally make them timeless, turned inwards and blinded to the outside world. 62 There is however a huge difference between a nearly palace house and a nearly rural house, even if both share the characteristic of being organised around a courtyard.
Fig. 2. Architectural plan or a "typical " North African house (Gallotti, 1926: 72)
Nowadays, there are about 12,000 buildings in Fez,63 of which 2,359 are empty. In 2004, according to the population census, 14,523 households (74.5% of the total population) were living in a house built before 1954; 4,048 (20.8%) in a house built between 1955 and 1974; 648 in a house built between 1975 and 1994; and 284 in a house built after 1995. It means that most houses date back to the Alaouite period (mid 17 th – nowadays). Some builders however reproduced the Merinid
62 In Arabic, a patio house is a dār . It comes from the verb dāra , which means "to turn around something." 63 The figures differ from one authority to the other. According to ADER, there are 13,385 houses, out of which 11,601 are historical houses. The Urban Agency counted 12,212 houses whose 9,369 are historical.
81 style, also called the Arab Andalus or Hispano Moorish style, which was probably set under the Merinid dynasty between the mid 13 th and the end of the 15 th century (Paccard, 1981). Few others took inspiration in the Art Deco style brought during the French Protectorate in the early 20 th century. These architectures of various styles and periods share the same materials. Walls, arches and vaults are made of khyata (i.e. solid brick), stones and a mortar of lime, water and sand (formerly earth). They are subsequently covered by a coating of lime and sand such as cob or by zelij (i.e. mosaic, enamelled small tile of clay of various shapes and colours). Zelij also cover grounds – together with tiles of marble and bejmat (i.e. enamelled half brick) – and fountains. Stones, such as marble, are used to sculpt fountains or the capitals of columns. Gypsum provides the plaster carved with chisels – and sometimes painted – by gabbassa (i.e. plaster craftsmen). This plaster decorates flat surfaces such as the edges of interior widows and doors or arcades under the form of a frieze with floral patterns or calligraphy. Some ceiling muqarnas (i.e. honeycomb) as well as the inside of some walls are also made out of plaster. Neijjārīn (i.e. carpenters) mainly work with cedar from the Atlas (Arz) that they cut and carve and that a zwāq (painter) may finally decorate. The quality of the wood defines its use for g aïza (i.e. beams), warqa (i.e. plates separating two floors, resting on the beams below and supporting a layer of 30 to 40 centimetres of rammed down earth – dessāssa – above. The upper surfacing is set on this earth layer), halqa (i.e. square opening to the sky at the top of the house above the central courtyard), doors, chassis and shutters. Nowadays, one should naturally add the essential work of the plumber and the electrician. Houses from various styles and periods also share the same pattern, that is to say a square house with a courtyard open to the sky; 2 to 4 salons, a kitchen and a toilet on the ground floor; an entrance with an elbow corridor; 1 or 2 floor(s), a steep staircase, a rooftop terrace and some store or junk rooms. According to Chaline (1990), this structure tends to help thermal protection. High houses receive as little sun as possible on the ground floor, and architectural decorations bring freshness. Finally, one finds the principles of symmetry and centrality in most houses, while each house has its own proportions, colours, size, and decoration. Before architects became unavoidable and compulsory in the construction of a house, the owner or the muhandis (i.e. mediator between the owner and the workers) were responsible for drawing two rectangles on the ground, the courtyard or patio ( bust d dār ) and the external wall (Galloti, 1926; Paccard, 1981). The patio can cover 25% of the house's surface area. The house may exceed the patio and external walls outline. Foreparts widen rooms of the first floor and go over the street when they do not cover it. These foreparts rest on corbelled beams supported by inclined legs fixed in the external wall. In the patio, one finds essential architectural element such as carved plaster ( gabs ), mosaic
82 (zelij ), carved and/or painted wood and the halqa , Iraqi glass (colour glass), wrought iron on the windows, and a central (sahrij ) or mural ( sqaya ) fountain. Ogive wooden doors leading to salons are huge – 2 metres wide and 4 meters tall. The two mobile leafs open and close through a pivot and socket system – the bottom of the door is in a carved stone while the top is in a piece of decorated wood with a kiosk shape named rtej . A triple claustra ( chemachech – decorative bay window above doors and rectangular windows through which light is supposed to enter) generally hangs over these doors. Most of the time, inside windows have a rectangular shape. They are not filled with glass but are provided with wooden shutter inside and a wrought iron metal gate in the patio side. The shutters link to the chassis with double nails. In huge houses, a portico goes round the patio. Either lintels (a system of layered wooden beams links the pillars) or masonry arcades top this portico. The latter may become a bartal (i.e. alcove opened in the patio) on the ground floor and a passage (gallery) bounded by a wooden or wrought iron balustrade in the first floor.
Pic. 10. Mural fountain and Iraqi glass. Credit: M. Istasse
The patio is also the multipurpose centre of daily activities such as meeting, cooking, eating, or sleeping. According to Marçais (1940: 227, my translation), "the house is aired and lit by its inner courtyard, whose piece of sky belongs to it alone." Mouawad (2008) endows the patio with a metaphysical value, for the patio allows the communication with other human beings and with the Universe. In this view, architecture follows social, religious and cosmological principles. The pools and fountains bring the water necessary for ablutions and cleanliness. Water is of prime importance in houses. Each was supplied with three water circuits: the water from the oued (i.e. river) for domestic tasks, spring water to drink, and a sewage disposal. Also, the patio lies at the intersection
83 of the vertical – communication with the divine – and the horizontal – communication with Mecca. One wall, usually the one with the bartal (i.e. alcove opened in the patio) is left "empty" of any first floor room. This wall, which climbs directly up to the halqa and is often poorly decorated – if so, with carved plaster – is said to be a passage to God. In addition to the patio, the entrance door and the elbow corridor constitute a main characteristic of the North African house. 64 In order to enter into a house, one announces him or herself in a specific way – by knocking the door or calling – for the inhabitants to recognise his or her identity. The visitor then has to wait in the corridor before a member of the house takes him/her to the visitors' room. Sefroui (2006 [1954]: 200, my translation) describes it in his novel. "The door opened. An old woman with an uncovered head and carrying a reed basket went out. She stared at us quietly and nodded. We followed in a queue in the entrance doorway after we beat our babuch [i.e. Moroccan slippers] on the ground. It was dark in the corridor. The pavement was irregular. From time to time, my mother or Lalla Aïcha called the Prophet to help her. They butted against the same obstacle: a pavement, a brick that was randomly lying there. The corridor turned left. Light from the patio blinded us." The entrance door, sometimes overhung by a wooden canopy, is a wooden rectangle of 2 metres wide on 2.5 meters tall. Wrought iron with a fork or trident shape as well as nails decorates the street side. With a corridor in elbow ( setwan ), the doorway constitutes a "border space," a screen onto the outside. Zouilai (1990) describes it as an internalised and imaginary line between the outside and the inside world, whose symbolic function is one of separation and link. The rooms’ versatility is another feature of Moroccan houses. Rooms fulfil various, barely exclusive, but sometimes preferential, functions. On the one hand, the rooftop terrace, described as the typical place of women (Mernissi, 1994), had, and still has, specific functions: sleeping during the summer, washing and drying clothes and food. A salon was dedicated to visitors while the other salons served at once as dining room, bedroom and living room. This versatility in function increases with the size of the house and the seasonal mobility. Inhabitants likely spent summer in the fresher ground floor rooms and winter in the warmer upstairs rooms. According to Zouilai (1990), the versatility of functions explains the scarcity and the high mobility of furniture. Low tables, banquettes composed by high and tough mattresses on wood pallets, small shelves and chests are easily movable from one room to another. Nowadays, the trend is to a specialisation of the rooms and to the lack of seasonal mobility (Navez Bouchanine, 1994). This specialisation marked in the more abundant decoration and furnishing, concerns firstly spaces of/for representation – the room for the visitors – and spaces for the couple – the private bedroom.
64 Berque (2010) also shows the importance of doors and the rites related to their passage in China and Japan.
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Pic. 11. Furniture in the visitor's room, early 20 th century. http://archnet.org/library/places/one place.jsp?place_id=1675
Paccard (1981) asserts that furniture was scarce in Moroccan households because of the profuse architectural decoration that adorned them. Decorations on the walls, grounds and ceilings have primacy over furniture. The latter is integrated into the surfaces, as for instance the banquette leans on the wall. In Paccard’s view, Moroccan architecture mainly consists in architectural decoration – filling surfaces – rather than in volumes – filling space. Muslim architecture is an art of ‘clothing buildings.’ In order to do so, craftsmen and artists cannot represent living beings for Allah is the only Creator and nobody can imitate His creation. As one Hadīth (i.e. saying or act ascribed to the Prophet Mohammed) reminds, "those who will suffer from the worse punishment on the Judgement Day are those who imitated the creation." This doesn’t prevent from diversity in patterns, which splits into four main categories: calligraphy – the words of Allah –, plant and floral decoration ( turiq ) – acanthus leave, fig tree leave, pine cone, Byzantine interlacing –, geometrical designs 65 – lines of circles, plaits, stars or geometric interlacing radiating from a central star ( testir ) – and items to fill the gaps.
65 As Gallotti (1926: 23, my translation) writes, Moroccans decorate with "repetitive pattern following a geometrical progression whose strength entirely rests on the almost blind respect of traditions and conventions."
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Pic. 12. Top left: geometrical pattern in mosaic ( testir ). Top right: floral pattern in wood and carved plaster Above: calligraphy in mosaic and carved plaster. Credit: M. Istasse
Scholars refer to several principles or oppositions to explain the structure of houses. The main dichotomy opposes the closed private house and the open public space. As Burckhardt writes (1992: 91), "the true, the unveiled face of Fez remains hidden to whoever knows Fez only from the street, and has seen only the shopping alleyways and the grey outer walls of the houses. The inside of the house is the strongly defended domain of the women." Many scholars share the idea that the structure of houses preserves the intimacy of the family living in the house, and particularly the women’s. The organisation around the courtyard, plain outer walls, and mucharabieh (i.e. lattice wood) protect the women’s honour – practices and activities are based on the notion of haram ,66 which means the women’s flat. For instance, visitors are allocated a specific and autonomous room, most of the time located near the entrance, in order to keep them far from the normal functioning of the house. Built to host an extended family, houses may nowadays offer a dwelling to several unrelated families. Inhabitants then protect their intimacy by raising walls, setting sheets or wooden panels in front of a door, covering the free space of the courtyard on the first floor, or knocking down plumbing to have water in each dwelling. This intimacy is also found in proverbs such as "Enquire about your mate before travelling and about your neighbours before buying a house" or "A
66 Coming from the root h.r.m, harām means at once what is forbidden and what is sacred, and haram , whose plural is harem , means the women's flat.
86 small ruined house is worth more than a huge shared palace."
Pic. 13. Plastic sheet separating two parts of a floor. Credit: M. Istasse
In addition to protecting the familial honour, the house’s closure materialises religious concepts. For instance, houses imitate the layout of the Prophet’s house in Damascus (Mouawad, 2008). Also, the uncovered patio opens the house to infinity, and the courtyard structure represents paradise with its symmetry and running water (Zouilai, 1990). According to Arkoun (1995), spirituality – i.e. a religious quest – is projected in buildings and architectural works. In that context, architecture provides a better life and an affective and aesthetic environment. Finally, the architectural sobriety, purity, coherency, and the lack of external social distinction signs express the egalitarian ideal and moral of modesty central to the Islamic religion. As Rghei and Nelson (1994: 147) put it, "one of the essential value in Islam is to emphasise the Batin (the inner aspect of the self or a thing) and to subdue the Zahir (the external aspect of the self or a thing)." The second main dichotomy opposes the clean, ordered and symmetrical house to the dirty, messy and sinuous street (Gallotti, 1926; Tauveron, 1990). According to Newcomb (2006: 298), "cleanliness is a social category associated with morality." Navez Bouchanine (1991) presents some actions undertaken by inhabitants in order to protect their house against dirtiness, such as to cover a street with concrete, to build extra height stairs, or to implement rounds in rubbish gathering. This latter action reminds me a lament of French owners living in the medina and undertaking works in their house. They decided to clean the street everyday after the end of the work, in order to avoid too much detritus from accumulating in the street. What a surprise when they saw all the neighbours throwing their rubbish in the evening just before the cleaning occured! They decided to stop being good neighbours and to clean the street only once a week.
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Finally, the Koran provides images and information about houses. The house appears through several words: bayt (pl. bouyoūt ), masakane or sakane (pl. masākine ), dār (pl. diour ). On the one hand, one word may have various meanings. For instance, dār also means the tribe or the country: dār al Harb is literally translated by "the house of war" but means "the country of the enemy." On the other hand, the various words share similar meanings: the human house on earth (sura 2, verse 84 for instance), the house of after life be it the Paradise (sura 2, verse 94 for instance) or Hell (sura 14, verse 28), the sacred place on earth like a mosque (sura 2, verse 125 for instance), the family or tribe (sura 11, verse 73 for instance). The topics of daily life (what to have in the house, how to behave) and war relate to the house on earth and the tribe. There are also advices: the house is a shelter, a godsend for those who could appreciate it and its value and can make profit from it. As a good inherited within the family and shared by its members, both spouses are responsible for the house. As a proverb asserts, "Undisciplined youth, house without a roof." Finally, happiness of and in the house doesn't consist of luxury but of the love of God. Houses built on the principle of faith and lightened by the Koran are strong compared to houses of non Muslims, which are weak or ‘spider’s houses’ (sura 29, verse 41).
4.1.3. Houses in the Fez medina
The foreigner as well as the anthropologist, whatever they have read or seen before going to Fez, are generally in awe in front of the beauty and the diversity of houses in their structure and in their architectural decoration. No informant, except few experts and guest house owners interested in architecture, talk about the symbolism or about the principles and oppositions explaining the structure of the house. The description of two houses, in their architecture and their daily life, shows the diversity and the complexity of the North African house.
4.1.3.1. Jawad's house
Five family members live in this house: Jawad, his mother Ftouma, his father Mohammed, his sister Amina and his brother Rachid – who is sporadically present at home to bathe, eat and sleep. No gender relations, no seasonal nomadism orients the organisation of the house. Members of the family rather wantit to be a functional place to live. The house, built in concrete in the middle of the 20 th century, is humbly decorated with traditional features such as carved plaster or mosaic. Modern tiles with the same patterns cover the
88 ground in all the rooms. Before living in the kasbah Boujloud house, the family lived in two houses in the heart of the medina. They bought the Boujloud house for several reasons. The four older brothers left the familial house in Zkak el Bral after they got married and the remaining family members didn't need a big house anymore. A smaller house would help the ageing mother and the sister, who works everyday, in the housework. Also, according to Jawad, "the Boujloud area is open. Here, it is the contrary of the medina. Here, you can see. […] Moreover, there are external windows [in the house], so that you can see outside. And it brings light inside. But in the medina, you absolutely need the halqa [i.e. square opening to the sky at the top of the house], because there is no window on the street." The house location is of prime importance: close to a medina gate, it facilitates moves and ensures a certain security. In the morning, the sister doesn't have to cross the still quite empty medina alone. "Each time, in the medina, you don't know if you will get [home]. When there is nobody in the streets, you can find people drinking alcohol and so on. So, my mother is always afraid something might happen to us." The latter doesn't have to climb the main street to go shopping or to take a taxi. "As soon as we found the house, we bought it... Here, it is close to everything, here." The most permanent member of the house is the mother. During my stay in the winter 2009/2010, she hardly went out except to visit family or to go to the public bath once a week. She took care of the house, opened the door when somebody – like me – rang the bell, and prepared the meals. She spends most of the time in the salon watching television. This television is set on 2M – a public channel – from morning til late in the evening. Ftouma even prepares food in front of the television, shelling beans or cutting carrots. The father shares his time between the mosque for the five daily prayers, a café located in a nearby square, and the house. At home, he remains alone in a second salon – without television – where a mattress welcomed his naps, readings and prayers. He eats alone – except when there is a celebration – or has his own plate on the common table. Amina, the sister, works as a primary teacher in the New City. She goes to school everyday except during the weekends. At home, she helps her mother in preparing the meals and doing the housework such as cleaning and washing the clothes. Although she spends a lot of time in the salon with the television, she often isolates herself to read parts of the Koran. Jawad for his part has his hairdressing salon close to the house. He spends most of the time there or at the cybercafé, and comes back home to eat and to sleep. He also manages the maintenance works in the house, such as repainting the patio walls before the Sheep Celebration or improving the waterproofing of the rooftop terrace. This rooftop terrace is hardly used. Ftouma almost never climbs on the terrace. Once, while I was reading, she joined me there to fill a pillow with sheep wool. Amina goes more often on the
89 terrace to wash the clothes and dry them. Jawad and I used the rooftop terrace to have conversations we couldn’t have downstairs, about religion or gender relations for instance. On the contrary, the three salons are often used. They are located around the patio and are furnished with low banquettes of a specific colour and low tables. They also serve as places of prayer. Three steps give access to a green colour salon in which the father spends his time and in which Amina stocks her school books and the biscuits for the guests in a huge plywood dresser. The fridge also impressively sits in that room because of the cramped kitchen. A third salon – the bigger one – of a red colour is dedicated to the guests. In the brown coloured television salon, members of the family watch television, but also have meals and snacks. Amina and Ftouma sleep in that salon and receive members of the family there. Sometimes, the patio replaces the salon as a place to eat. Three yellow banquettes and a low round table allow members of the family to eat and take naps there. A television sits imposingly on a display case in a corner. Aside from the numerous items in the display showcase – calendars, figurines, souvenirs from Mecca – two posters – one of the Kabba in Mecca and one of a girl in prayer – as well as a clock in plastic decorate the walls of the patio. This patio was emptied before the 2009 Sheep Celebration for Jawad to repaint the walls and for the sheep to spend the last two nights in the house. The sheep were killed, hung and cut in the patio, where a sewer opening allowed the water and blood to drain off. Because of the blood flowing, and in order to avoid any problem with the jnun (i.e. genies) living in the house, Ftouma put salt in the mouth of each sheep before the butcher cut their throat, because jnun are supposed to dislike salt. She also poured milk in the sewer before and after the three Sheep Celebration days. The small kitchen is located in a corner of the patio. Amina and Ftouma cooked and boiled food on a unique gas burner, and sometimes, they grill liver on the kānūn (i.e. brazier, coal burner in clay). A sink, which serves to wash the dishes and the food before cooking it, is located at the end of the room, under a very small window that cannot be shut. On the wall in front of the gas burner, there are two plastic shelves welcoming the crockery (glasses for the tea and for water, teapots, Chinese porcelain plates and platters (which replaced ceramic earthenware), wide clay platters for tajine and couscous, cutlery, and food such as onions or sugar. Pans and couscous steamers are stored in shelves under the sink. The bedrooms and the Western bathroom are located on the first floor. A Moroccan bathroom ( bīt lma) – a hole and a tap with a bucket to flush and to wash oneself – is located downstairs under the staircase. However, after two surgeries, the father was unable to squat anymore, and Jawad built a Western bathroom. The latter is composed of a Western toilet and a pipe on the ceiling bringing water in the fashion of a shower. A wide plastic bucket and a bowl transform
90 the bathroom into a hammam where one has to pour water on his/her body. Next to the bathroom is the father’s bedroom – where I never set foot –, then next to it is a storing room with a bed and a wardrobe, and finally, Jawad’s bedroom. Nobody is allowed to enter his bedroom to clean it, and I had the opportunity to visit it only once. At the bottom of the bed was the television. There was no wardrobe or cupboard in that room and everything rested on the ground or in boxes. Preparing food and doing housework are the two main occupations of women in the house. Two days after I arrived in the house, I wrote in my field notes, "I started writing, in front of the television with Ftouma loudly blowing up her chewing gum and the father wordlessly praying in the neighbouring room. After the romantic Mexican TV series ended and I thought I could watch a news report in French, Ftouma decided to clean a room upstairs. Why not, after all, it is only 9.40 pm! Yalla, a sluicing water! We cleared out the room and I then swept. While I was picking up the dust with the short handled brush slice, Ftouma came and picked everything up with her hands. So practical! As she has a heart problem, she gasped loudly and I soon relieved her of cleaning the ground with a hand brush. The principle was the following: we filled a bucket in the bathroom, we poured it in the room and we scrubbed. Scrubbing means squatting with a brush without handle – that of the toilets – and to sharply scrub, knowing that the brush was not as new as it used to be. Ftouma popped by again with a broom. Jawad arrived just on time to scrape the ground. Well. But the room is located on the first floor. We throw water in that room and the hallway and the stairs were full of dirty water. We just put the dirt out of the room and we were far from finishing cleaning. But the house is well done. The dirty water drained off downstairs and arrived in the sewer without wetting the entrance corridor. We scrubbed the hallway and the staircase with water, and we were done at 11.30 pm."
Pic. 14. Jawad's patio. Credit: M. Istasse
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Pic. 15. Jawad's kitchen. Credit: M. Istasse
Pic. 16. Jawad's bedroom. Credit: M. Istasse
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Pic.17 Jawad's rooftop terrace. Credit: M. Istasse
4.1.3.2. Ruth's house
Ruth's house is a tourist accommodation. Ruth, a German woman, bought this house located in a neighbourhood at the heart of the medina in 2005. After long and costly construction works, she decided to open a guest house and to live in one of the first floor rooms. The fact that the house is a guest house makes the description of its daily life difficult. Depending on the presence of guests, one to three employees are present in the house. Amina cleans the rooms and clothes while the guests are away, Naïm welcomes guests, prepares and serves breakfasts, and cooks evening meals, and Meriem helps Ruth in the administrative work. The three of them have the key of the house and go in and out as they please, while the guests have to ring the bell. Ruth is present in the house as much as possible and tries to personally welcome guests. Ruth's house is bigger and more richly decorated than Jawad's house. In the patio, white marble with small white, green, black and blue mosaic in between cover the tiled ground. On the walls, starting from the ground, there is a 10 cm high blue mosaic frieze, then a white, green, orange, black and yellow mosaic in a flower pattern on 50 cm, followed by another 10 cm high mosaic frieze composed by black crosses surrounded by a white or yellow cross and a blue frame,
93 and finally a 10 cm high frieze alternating black and white pieces of mosaic. It is followed by white plaster wall leading to a triple gabs frieze with a floral pattern then, a geometric pattern and a floral one with blue and white colours, and then a strip of painted wood. A wooden halqa painted with floral patterns runs along the open roof. A metal wire encloses it, with a removable plastic roof above. In the patio, doors are 4 meters high and are composed of two leafs of painted wood with a geometric pattern dominated by a red colour. Above the doors are a triple claustra with painted gabs and geometric, floral and honeycomb patterns. The doors leading to the kitchen and the hallway are simply varnished. Twenty windows of various sizes punctuate the patio walls. All of them have wooden shutters on the room side and a wrought iron grid on the patio side. Above the four windows giving on the salon, there is Iraqi glass in a half circle and a 10 cm wide of blue and white painted gabs with a floral pattern surround the window. The patio is furnished with three low wooden tables (one in the bartal , another covered by glass in the middle of the patio, and a round one next to the fountain), a white three places sofa in the bartal (i.e. alcove), two pink Ottoman pouffes next to the central table, and three plant pots. There is also a brass kettle to wash hands and three candleholders on the fountain edge, three lanterns (two on the ground and a smaller on the central table), a squared candle and a card holder on the bartal table, four wall lights and two other lamps in copper (one in the bartal and one in the fountain), all made in copper, and a small djembe next to the sofa. The mural fountain (there is no central fountain) is composed of a tank decorated with mosaic from the ground to the top of the tank – 10 cm high strip of blue mosaic, 8 branches white and yellow stars on a white background and of 80 cm high. The edges are made of white marble. From the tank to the top, there are 3 water arrivals, and a rib decorated with a 20 branches star. Then, above a black and white with yellow and black crescents mosaic frieze of 10 cm high, there are two strips of painted wood with floral patterns. In front of the fountain is a bartal of 2 meters in depth. The ground is tiled like the patio. On the walls, there is mosaic from the doorstep to almost two meters high, and then a 20 cm high strip of white plaster, followed by painted plaster with floral pattern and writings. Above, there are 3 claustra with honeycomb and a floral gabs frieze before a strip of painted wood. The ceiling is a painted wood one. On the two other walls, a salon faces a bedroom. Ruth usually welcomes guests in the salon. Orange and purple low banquettes run along three walls. Two low tables are covered with books, magazines and leaflets about Fez and Morocco. In a corner, a stereo plays music the all day long. The bedroom (and more generally the four bedrooms) is furnished with a double bed, carpets and fabrics (the colour varies from one bedroom to the other), a table (low round hollow or desk style),
94 leather Ottoman pouffes , a wardrobe, a wood chest, and wall shelves in wood. There are three kinds of lamps: wall lights in copper, hanging lamps in copper, and atmospheric lamps in copper or leather. There is not much decoration besides vases and chests. The in suite bathroom is provided with a shower (only one has a bath), a washbasin, a toilet, traditional soap and ghassoul (i.e. natural clay used in cosmetics) in a bowl, and towels. Architecturally, the ground floor bedroom is tiled with mosaic on the ground, mosaic on the walls on 1,5 meter high followed by white plaster, and a gaïza (i.e. beam) ceiling. On the rooftop terrace, there are numerous plant pots (aromatic plants such as thyme or rosemary, bougainvillea), tables in mosaic and wrought iron, seats in wrought iron or wicker with cushions, solid banquettes with cushions, low tables in wood. The toilets and a shower are located in a corner. The ground is tiled with terracotta. On one part of the rooftop, the ground has been raised and covered with a pergola to protect it from the sun. Lamps are incrusted in the walls, and there are lanterns of various sizes. Another part of the rooftop, the menzeh (i.e. pavilion in a garden or isolated room on the rooftop), serves as dining room. Its walls are covered with plaster of a sandy colour. The room is furnished with an 8 seats table covered with a pink napkin, and wrought iron seat with pink cushions. Under the table is a carpet. On an iron shelf, there are teapots, glasses and brass candleholders. The fridge is in a corner, and a brass plate with several objects decorates its top. In another corner, there is the stove, and next to it is the kitchen corner with two electric hotplates, an electric kettle, a coffee maker, a toaster, a single sink and shelves covered in dishes. The main kitchen is located on the ground floor, and is equipped with two sinks, an electric cooker with an oven, a worktable and a big fridge. There are shelves for dishes, plates, a kettle, a coffee maker, a blender, pots and pans.
Pic. 18: Ruth's rooftop terrace. Credit: M. Istasse
95
Pic. 19. Ruth's patio. Credit: M. Istasse
Pic. 20. Ruth's bedroom (first floor). Credit: M. Istasse
96
Pic. 21. Ruth's kitchen (ground floor). Credit: M. Istasse.
Rather than describing houses as they were supposed to be in the literature, or to give them a status of taken for granted "picture like world" (Keane, 1995), I took them as a starting point to investigate all the networks of human beings and tangible and intangible things that met in houses. These networks are links to ways to engage with the materiality 67 of the house. I start with the acquisition of houses by medina inhabitants and the works they undertake, two modalities Navez Bouchanine (1997) stresses as important for Moroccan inhabitants. Doing so, I present the various actors involved in the construction works of a house, such as the owner, the workers, members of institutions but also rules and permits. I then question the notions of legality and ruses resorted to by those who undertake construction works. In the following chapter, I describe ways of furnishing and decorating houses. Although I do not bring anything new in the investigation of home furnishing, I stress the importance of taste as a principle to furnish and decorate and as a criterion to judge other’s interiors. As such, taste is a criterion of social distinction. I then describe the house used as a tourist accommodation. I then survey how owners face the notions of hospitality, privacy and tradition and how these take shape. I then turn to the agency of the house, describing what the house makes its inhabitants do. Doing so, I take a stance in the debate between the subject and the object approach of agency. I finish with the question of the inhabitants’ skills and competence in maintaining houses and in the preservation of heritage.
67 It has to be clear that the materiality of houses, what Miller (2005) studies, is different from the materials of houses investigated by Ingold (2007b). Cf. Introduction p. 4.
97 4.2. Undertaking works in a house
Medina inhabitants own their house after having bought or received it as a legacy, or they rent it, or they in squat it. 68 According to a Moroccan proverb, "the first thing one should own is a home, and it is the last thing one should sell, for a home is one’s tomb on the side of heaven." In the same vein, Jawad told me that "owning a house in Morocco is like being a king." His brother bought half a floor in a house to make sure to have a roof. Asma, a Moroccan inhabitant, considered people renting a floor in a house poorer than those owning it, as her family does. According to the 1994 population census, about half of Moroccan inhabitants rent their dwelling, that is to say a house, a floor or a room. The number of households in a house may reach 17 according to Lahbil Tagemouati (2001). Few live in a house they squat or in the house of a relative living far from Fez. Amina, a Moroccan inhabitant working in a guest house, lived in the ryad of her husband's family with other family members because the owners had moved to Casablanca and didn’t take care of the house. The latter, a very large ryad, was in decay and Amina and her family had no money to undertake major works.
Pic. 22. Deteriorated column in Amina’s house. Credit: M. Istasse
68 80% of houses are melk (i.e. private ownership, including joint ownership), 9% are Habous (3.4% of public Habous and 5.6% of private Habous), and 5% are in undivided possession. A house may host up to 10 households, which means about 70 persons. A United Nations Development Programme report (UNDP, 1992) makes mention of a specific case study. 8 households – 53 persons – lived in a 335 square meters house – one floor and a rooftop terrace, this later being inhabited.
98 Foreigners generally own their house. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several media – newspaper articles, television documentaries – spread the idea according to which it was possible to buy a house in one weekend. In an article of a 2004 Architecture du Maroc ,69 Zerhouni (2004: 9, my translation), writes, " [d]o you want to buy an old house in the medina? Nothing is easier. Look up only a few minutes at one door in the city of your choice, as any curious tourist would do. Immediately, a serious and multilingual man approaches you and manages to offer you a visit of the most humble abode to the small palace thanks to a simple phone call. Once the venerable doorsteps hurdled, you are dazzled in the patio with the age of sparkling enamels of zelij [i.e. mosaic] shiny with time. Bargaining the price is all that's left to do. Any house, or thereabouts, is for sale." A fast and simple purchase may happen. Kate, an American guest house owner, bought her house very quickly, "between the day I saw the house and the day I had the keys, it was something like three days. It's nice, it happens nowhere else in the world." In fact, one has to distinguish finding a house and buying a house. According to Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, "there are 30 millions of Moroccans, there are 30 millions of real estate agents." Visiting a house, even if a family still lives in it, is not a problem. However, buying a house may be more complex. The number of heirs constitutes a first problem. As Abdelaziz, a Morocco French guest house owner, said, "there were 17, well I do not exactly remember, but a lot of heirs. And it was a bit difficult for them to agree on the price. But in the end, I was quite lucky. The oldest brother was on my side and he was quite straight laced and reliable. But behind, members of the family resisted and tried to fiddle a bit more." Sometimes, Moroccan families split for money matters after they sell the house. Another problem concerns the legal procedure by the adul (i.e. traditional notary) or the public notary. The procedure may turn complex when the house is squatted. Because squatters occupied the house, Jawad bought it for 26 millions centimes instead of 34.70 The squatting family refused to leave as long as Jawad didn’t find them a new accommodation and the municipality’s authorities were not really helpful. Foreigners for their part do not hesitate to pay for former inhabitants to leave the house once they have bought it. Price is a last problem. Philippe, a French art historian who managed an estate agency said that "prices have risen very quickly. There is no standard to determine the price of a house, which is always very affective. In case of a familial house, owners evaluate it very at a very high price. And if a neighbour sells his house at such a price, whatever the size of the house, people want to sell theirs about the same price or more. So, some houses worth 40,000 € were sold for 200,000."
69 Bimonthly magazine dedicated to architecture in Morocco. 70 About 26,000 € instead of 34,000 €.
99 Once a house is acquired, inhabitants generally undertake construction works.71 Foreigners, because of their desire of comfort and their economic status, go for important construction works. They add bathrooms and big kitchens, they improve and most of the time even change the electricity and water supplies altogether, they strip the walls and woods, they cover the open rooftop with a removable structure, they redo most of the architectural decorations, they add a fountain or a chimney, they replace the mosaic by tadelakt (i.e. coating made of lime and water), they build a second staircase, they raise the height of the rooftop terrace. It often results in houses of a cream colour with plants on the rooftop terrace and an oiled and hobnailed entrance door. Members of institutions and foreigners often assert that Moroccan inhabitants do not undertake construction works. However, a Harvard study (World Bank, 1995) states that both owners and tenants living in a medina house undertaken construction works. They only differ, however, in the amount of money they invest. Owners who do not live in their house but rent it are not eager to undertake works and they refuse spending money in maintenance works as long as the tribunal does not force them to do so. 72 Tenants on their hand do not undertake major works, as the owner generally does not reimburse them. Moreover, the tax system – national tax, urban tax and income tax – favours the construction of new buildings over the restoration of older ones. Also, contrary to the aforementioned rumour, few Moroccans, be they owners, tenants or squatters, claimed to not having undertaken construction works in the house they live in. During my three months stay in his family, Jawad repainted the walls in the patio before the ‘aid el Kebir (i.e. Feast of the Sacrifice), replaced the tiles and improved the cover of the rooftop terrace for better waterproofing before winter, set a new entrance door because the former was difficult to open, and changed the pipes in the corridor to avoid dampness on the walls. When Sarah, a French resident, bought her house in 2010, the owner showed her the works he had undertaken. He had widened the staircase, built a kitchen in the patio, and replaced the old ground mosaic with modern tiles. Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, and her husband, improved the rooftop terrace to make it cleaner – and easier to clean – as they have a pigeon aviary. Many families I visited told me about the "minor" changes they undertook when they entered or inherited their house. As Mohammed, a retired soldier living in the medina and renting a house for more than 13 years told me, " makan, fia ldo, lma (i.e. Now, there is electricity and water)." Nonetheless, Moroccans pointed out to the expensive price of traditional materials as a significant hurdle to overcome in going for construction works. For instance, one square metre of
71 I use the expression "construction works" to refer to building, maintenance, restoration, renovation or improvement works, without distinguishing them. 72 The law about tenancy relationship favours low rents to protect tenants. For instance, in the medina, the medium rent is 250 Dh per month, that is to say about 23 €. It doesn't encourage owners to undertake works.
100 modern tiles costs about 120 Dh (11 €) while the same surface covered with traditional mosaic varies between 300 (27 €) and 1,200 Dh (110 €) according to the patterns and shapes. Jawad explained that "we look at the price before we care for the quality [of materials]. Do you understand? Because rich people, they do things like that. But for us, the working class, if we want to do something, we look at the price first. […] For instance [he shows me the frieze in carved plaster running at 1.60 meter high on the four walls], it is traditional painted plaster . But it is industrial . A gabs [i.e. plaster ] worker who wants to make one metre of this needs a lot of time. So it is expensive." In addition to financial concerns, Jawad mentioned the mediocre interest many Moroccans have in restoration – they content themselves with "very simple works." Moroccans owning a tourist accommodation undertake bigger construction works. Owners in the Ziyarates programme generally upgraded their house to fit the standards and conditions of a home stay. For instance, many families already had an equipped kitchen with a gas cooker and not the usual gas burner. Some built an in suite bathroom in one bedroom – Abdelhay turned a junk room into a bathroom – or added traditional decoration in the patio – another member redid the patio entirely. All of them had to buy furniture such as beds or bedside tables. Guest house owners often had to enhance the house according to the international standards of tourism. They provided the house with moderns and comfortable amenities, efficient water and electricity supplies, and bedrooms that would be as private as possible.
Pic. 23. Works in a house. Credit: M. Istasse
101 4.2.1. Qualifications of the construction works
Informants used various words to describe the works they undertook in the house they live in. "I tried to keep it as it was" and "I tried to redo it in the same spirit" are the two oft heard sentences resuming the works undertaken. Informants who undertook preservation or restoration works mentioned their will "to restore [their] house like a historical monument" even if they had to keep features they disliked. Informants also evoked a passion for architecture or houses, a respect for the house, or the obligation to conform to rules as main reasons to undertake preservation works. They did not remove old items or did not replace what was old with something identical but new. They favoured and promoted the use traditional materials and techniques. As a consequence, the house "remains in its original state." Renovation or rehabilitation works consist of redoing the house in a traditional manner, identically, in "the same spirit" but with new or external materials. Renovating amounts to reviving old ornaments while bringing modern comfort. Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, described renovation as bringing modern comfort while respecting the architecture and the materials. He also underlined that he gave free rein to his imagination in finding new functions for rooms or in creating new spaces. Abdelaziz, a Morocco French guest house owner, declared that his "house deserved to be renovated purely, and I think we did it." It implied the identical renovation of what should be renovated, and the use of the best materials – even modern ones – and workers. This distinction between restoration and renovation mainly depends on the relation inhabitants have with the house. Fatima, a Moroccan architect and the owner of two guest houses, made clear the distinction between renovation and restoration on the basis of her personal link with her two houses. In her view, "you feel the restoration deeply," as you contribute to something that "has a soul." She restored her first house because it was special to her – she knew it when she was a child, and both the 150 year old palm tree in the courtyard and the volumes of the house impressed her. However, she renovated the second house, that is to say she "contributed to something existing" and not special in her opinion. However, informants often gave conflicting opinions on how to effectively undertake restoration or renovation works. Philippe favoured the preservation of "the least square centimetre of antique, of the oldest former state known," whereas his workers renovated and redid the house in an identical way with new materials. He gave me the example of mosaic (zelij ) that workers removed to redo the ground and then simply replaced. "We do that sometimes when the zelij is wonderful but bumped and cracked. We ask the workers 'You keep it,' but they really dislike it, for it
102 involves much more work and it represents a waste of time in their eyes. Once, a client selected the zelij to keep, and the workers throw everything out! All those old zelij she had saved and put aside, she classified by pattern... She lost everything." According to David, preservation goes through the training of workers. Before the 1950s, Moroccans living in the medina knew how to restore houses because they had a work of quality in plain view. But those in the know left, and nowadays inhabitants content themselves with approximate works. They have less knowledge and know how than before. Little by little, however, skilled building workers come up, and it is through meticulous restorations that things are going to improve. David took the example of his carpenter, whom he trained by giving him several tasks and who was later hired for a national project at the Attarine medersa (i.e. Koranic school). Both renovation and restoration differ from improvement, which consists of bringing comfort in a house following an idea of modernisation. According to Omar, a Moroccan guest house employee, "the addition of modern elements in a traditional house is not compulsory. But it is unavoidable. Modern elements improve comfort and make life easier." Improvements depend on the inhabitants' priorities and needs in terms of electricity and water supplies, electric devices (washing machine, television, air conditioning), facilities (kitchen, bathroom), and aesthetic (plant pots on the rooftop terrace, coloured lights in the fountain). As Emma, an Australian guest house owner, declared about her will to have a Western bathroom, "I don't know if in the medina they call it an improvement. But to me, it is an improvement and even a priority." Also, in Jawad’s house, I benefited from a modern toilet and a shower because the father, after several surgeries, couldn't use a traditional toilet. Aside from bathrooms, staircases constitute a second touchstone in improving a house. "[In the patio], you had a fountain, and behind the fountain, a staircase. The angle of the stairs was about 45 degrees. And the staircase was narrow, 70 centimetres maximum. Of course, if you had missed one stair, you would have fallen and probably killed yourself. Absolutely impracticable. So I said, I'll welcome tourists in this house, the staircase must be comfortable" (Benoit, French guest house owner). Among other kinds of works, informants mentioned maintenance and "must do" works, ranging from daily housework to basic and essential works. Only a few spoke of destruction, and most of the time, they did so to qualify the "stripping" of the house (walls and wooden elements) or the destruction of a ceiling to build a bathroom. Informants barely spoke of retrieval even if they practiced it. They retrieved materials such as wood to save money and to keep everything in the house. For instance, some kept pieces of wood to turn them into footboards, or used former doors recovered with glass as tables.
103 People in charge of undertaking and controlling construction works – architects, members of institutions – had specific ideas about which works to undertake and how. Young Moroccan architect Meriem claimed she had "a liberal approach and philosophy of restoration and conservation." According to her, "when you dig into those buildings, you don’t discover one period of time but layers of several historical periods. So, to restore identically leads to this question: to restore identically, but from the first, the second, or the third period? And why not follow the technical and material evolution instead of following the museification approach to restoration that freezes a certain period of time? Why not restore with modern materials, with nowadays techniques? Scientific progress is such that it would be stupid not to make the most of it." Jean Paul Ichter is a French architect and urban planner who has been working for more than 50 years in Fez. Former Inspector of Urbanism but still working as an architect, he also headed the Association Fès Demain , concerned with the future urban development of the Fez medina. In his view, cities are similar to a living organism whose cells end up dying and "houses collapse [because] life doesn't circulate anymore. […] In the medina, people live in holes. It is not a city anymore, it is a ghetto for poor people." He had no problem in using modern materials such as concrete to restore and build houses. He justified it with the prosthesis metaphor. When a surgeon cuts a leg, he could replace it by a piece of wood, but also by plastic and metal to have a more efficient leg. He also underlined the fact that Lyautey used concrete in the Bouanania medersa [i.e. Koranic school] "and nobody sees it, nobody knows it, because it is invisible." Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, also had no problem in using modern materials when needed. He used normal steel girders for they are cheaper and stronger than cedar wood beams. These metal beams are also more ecological than wood and the metal aspect can be easily hidden behind thin wood strips. He also built a completely new tower in a garden and used concrete for the underpinnings. In his view, the problem relies less in the use of modern materials than in their characteristics. The qualities of concrete make its use difficult and dangerous in traditional buildings because it fixes the building and doesn't allow it to move together with surrounding buildings. As a consequence, it provokes collapsing or deterioration within the house or within the neighbouring ones. He also made sure to not mix cement or concrete with sand and lime mortars because concrete does not allow walls to breathe, and he insisted on security when one choice had to be made over the other – he always proposed to his clients the price with traditional materials and the price with modern ones, the latter being cheaper. For instance, he always fixed a crack with traditional bricks. On the other hand, David avoided modern materials to restore his house. David claimed he inscribed himself in the more Western general trend of restoration consisting in not redoing
104 everything identically, but in redoing the necessary with traditional materials. For instance, he used old wood to improve the deteriorated parts of the salon doors and after more than 10 years of work, he still didn't have a kitchen or a bathroom. His main concern had to do with the former condition to which the house could be brought back. According to him, a frieze in one salon had been added 100 years ago, and was "too much" in the decoration of the room. He then decided to remove it sooner or later. But in the patio, the white and black marble paving, with blue, white, black and orange small zelij (i.e. mosaic) in between was probably 80 years old, and there should be another zelij underneath. But he wondered if he should remove the new paving to come back to the older (not knowing its condition) or to leave it. He followed the latter, partly because the marble paving matched his taste. However, he didn’t always look at the aesthetic aspect of architecture. He wanted pencil marks to be visible on the wood after the stripping, and described them as "patina." He didn't mind that two coatings with different colours mixed on the condition that they were as traditional as possible. However, as he was talking about the wall coating he had made redone some five years ago, he showed and touched the wall. The new sand coloured coating partly crumbled – dust from the coating stayed on his finger. The old one, of a white colour because of whitewashing, probably about 200 year old according to him, was still in perfect condition. There was no dust, nothing that would stick to his fingers after touching it. In his view, it was a proof that builder workers are less skilled than before. In addition to theoretical concerns, Fettah added a practical aspect in construction works. Craft isn't a written art, for the craftsman expresses himself while making the building. As a consequence, one has to observe the craftsman at work and to train. He himself got trained with houses belonging to foreigners – he was responsible for the Riad Al Bartal and Riad Laroussa restorations – before restoring his own house. On the basis of this idea of restoration, he questioned the efficiency of architects and experts in heritage restoration who, as they do not live in the medina, do not have required knowledge to restore a house but tend to "museify" them, "to make them a tomb for art." Finally, we find institutional definitions of restoration, rehabilitation and renovation. Some are specific to Fez. In the 1997 Master Plan (cf. appendix p. 343), restoration applied to "any building listed or nominated on the national heritage list or evaluated as having a value by the governmental authority in charge of cultural affairs and the agency in charge of the Fez Medina safeguard." Restoration can then occur in zones M1, M2 and M3 defined by the Master Plan. Rehabilitation concerns "any traditional building involving improvements and the implementation of facilities and services for the inhabitant's well being." Finally, renovation is "authorised for a
105 building without value or a ruin to rebuild." For each category, the Master Plan lists what is allowed and what is forbidden, the materials and techniques to use, the features to preserve, the amenities and supplies to provide. More than the actions undertaken, these definitions are based on the kind of building and its value. Other definitions apply in international institutions. Conservation is at the core of the Getty Conservation Institute manual about values and heritage conservation (Getty Institute, 2000). Knowing heritage values in specific contexts allows determining what and how to conserve. In a wide definition, conservation is a complex social practice, involving all the fields of heritage preservation: academic studies, technical interventions, and political publications. In a narrower definition, conservation is a physical intervention, a specific treatment. Conservation requires an integrated approach of all the fields involved in carrying the best possible intervention. However in practice several fields succeed one another chronologically, according to an interest given to heritage (archaeological excavation, movement of a community), its protection (evaluation and listing of heritage), its management (managers are responsible for it) and interventions on it (academics, architects, archaeologists are consulted).
The wide span of works and theories then make difficult the classification of works as it gives free room to a great diversity in realising these works and to debates about the values underlying construction works.
4.2.2. Values in construction works
In their discourses about construction works, informants referred to the respect of the house or its architectural layout and features that they tried to apply. For instance, they avoided opening walls and preferred running the electric cables along the walls. Guy, a French tourist accommodation owner, was about to break some "ugly" mosaic when he started the construction works. He finally kept it because the elements were so thin and the work was so refined that it would have been a crime to remove it. Informants also said they respected the spirit of the house. 73 This spirit replaces tradition and authenticity when these two are impossible to find out and reproduce – the house is in ruin – or impossible to live in – displays and fittings are too precarious. Simon, a French guest house owner, found his house too sober in architectural decoration and "typical of the Art Deco style." He decided to add some carved plaster around doors and windows in the patio. He underlined that he respected "the spirit of tradition" by taking inspiration from the
73 For more information about the spirit of the house, cf. infra p. 229.
106 original patterns in other rooms and by hiring medina craftsmen. "We didn't really respect the original architecture, but we added some details to be closer to the Fassi architecture." In his view, the recurrence and permanence through time of Islamic architectural principles facilitates the preservation of the house's spirit. Oldness is another value. On the one hand, oldness justifies which kind of materials and techniques to use. In 2009, Hamza decided to build his guest house in a "traditional way." According to him, his house shares the same features as other medina houses except in terms of oldness. Amélie and her husband, a couple who owns a guest house and a private house, built additional rooms in concrete in the guest house because this house was not so old – built in the early 1940s – and was already built with concrete. On the other hand, oldness raises the issue of the older state of the house to conform to. Similarly to David’s issue with the frieze and the pavement, Valentin, a French pilot owning three houses, said he should renovate the oldest one as a printing shop if he took as basis the 20 th century house. He should focus on painting on a 19th century basis, and he should remove the house elevation, if it was to be in keeping with 18 th century models. He doesn't have information dating back to the 17 th century about his house. The values of tradition and authenticity 74 generally raised debates. To support their stance for or against swimming pools in the patio, informants recalled the argument of tradition. On the one hand, they asserted that swimming pools are not at odds with Fassi houses and may replace fountains and pools. On the other hand, "digging a swimming pool" to them was tantamount to "mutilating the patio." Loïc, a French guest house owner, thought a swimming pool "disfigures the house, and the patio is not done for it. I rather agree with a fountain with a more or less big pool, because it brings freshness, it is more or less traditional." In the guest house managed by Aziz, the swimming pool is located in another building because "we do not destroy a patio to dig a swimming pool. A traditional house is worth more than a swimming pool. It has a lot of value. We cannot destroy it. It is a heritage." In addition to a traditional argument, the swimming pool detractors have the law on their side. Nobody has the right to dig a swimming pool and the term "swimming pool" is forbidden in the architectural plans. Some added a moral accusation: "water is expensive, and it is not ecological," said Gigi. Finally, guest house owners sometimes mentioned a functional accusation. Swimming pools are too small to swim in, they keep dampness going in the house, and swimmers disturb other guests because of the noise. Tradition also appeared in debates about materials and techniques. Informants then connected tradition to the revitalisation and use of craft works. Foreigners generally underlined they participated to the conservation of threatened traditional occupations such as tillers, plasterers,
74 Informants didn't distinguish them in their discourses, so do I.
107 carpenters by hiring traditional workers to undertake their construction works. Informants also made clear that by undertaking works in their house, they saved it just as they strengthened nearby houses. Some foreigners didn’t hesitate to go for works in the house of their neighbours because these latter were too poor to fix their house or because the house was seriously threatening their own house.
Scholars often oppose tradition and authenticity to fake. The inauthentic and the fake are by no means new issues in historical centres. In a study of Troyes’ historical centre, Hsu (2005: 187) raises the issue of " façadisme ." According to him, the expression "to rebuilt identically" is problematic. Rebuilding involves a former demolition and not especially a reconstitution or restitution of architectural features after documents and archaeological information. The identical and the traditional are then myths. More generally, the respect of tradition also creates the risk of "fake olds" (Gravari Barbas, 2005: 150). In Fez, Catherine, a French architect hired for the Millenium Challenge Corporation programme, shared this concern. The risk with renovation and rehabilitation is to fall into pastiche, an imitation realised with traditional materials but at odds with the building or the needs of inhabitants. According to Owens (2002), pastiche and pretence occur when there is a discursive heterogeneity without norms and result in the production of dead styles, pseudo replica of something that has never existed, of Disneyland. Rather than an issue with fake, informants stressed the opposition between tradition and modernity. Foreigners generally wanted comfortable houses looking "traditional" while Moroccans preferred a "modern" house satisfying the basic needs. Michel, a French resident, made his new doors look older by using chemicals. According to a British owner, foreigners do respect tradition because they want houses that "emit authenticity." Moroccan inhabitants mentioned works related to comfort, security and waterproofing. Some also reached comfort by moving from one house to another. A couple living formerly in a flat moved in 2002 to a house because the flat was too small for a family with a newborn child. The same family has installed a "Western" bathroom – with separate toilet, shower and sink – in order to "live comfortably" in their new house. A closer look at the Moroccan Arabic words allows refining this opposition between the traditional and the modern. In Moroccan Arabic, beldi (i.e. traditional, from the country) is often opposed to rumi (i.e. industrial, modern, foreign). The way of doing and the geographic origin support the distinction. Another couple of terms blurs the distinction. Qdim (i.e. old) relates to jdid (i.e. new). According to Jawad, "when you enter into a house, you don't know if it [i.e. mosaic] is old or new. But it is traditional. We can use techniques to make the zelij [i.e. mosaic] look older. The most important is the Moroccan way of doing this."
108 More than in its relation to "new", "old" is problematic in its relation to "traditional". In this case, old refers to the age, the oldness, while traditional is a way of doing typical of the country. The difference lies in the quality of the final product: the "new traditional" is said to be of Chinese quality. If the "old traditional" interests foreigners, Moroccans can rather afford the "industrial traditional". For instance, and for evident economic reasons, Moroccans try to give a modern aspect to their house by adding colourful lights in the fountain, by buying modern tiles, or by hiding what is squalid behind plywood. Finally, Moroccans usually associate the old with a negative meaning of being too old, old fashioned. Jawad said that foreigners "prefer seeing the thing as it is. By contrast here, people like when it is old, but looking new. It is our culture. If you enter a house and you find shutters with old paintings, you think the tenant does not take care of the shutters." Authenticity and tradition then have a double meaning, that of roots linked with the past and oldness ( qdim ) and that of roots linked with a local origin ( beldi ).
4.2.3. Institutions responsible for the construction works
Before undertaking construction works, inhabitants have to ask for a permit (cf. infra p. 113) and to conform to rules. Several institutions are responsible for these legal and written rules whose respect they monitor on the building site. The baladiya , or the Fez Medina urban municipality, 75 is the place where inhabitants submit a request for permits related to construction works. The baladiya issues permits after architects from the municipality Plan Department checked the demand with regards to the urban regulation. The 1946 vizier decree, transformed into the 1969 regulation of roadways and construction, regulates the height of buildings (maximum 11 meters), forbids any balcony that doesn't respect the road alignment and the use of materials such as reed and thatch, declares the patio must be minimum 40% of the plot's surface (minimum 36 square meters), and constrains to redo the facade painting every 3 years. The baladiya also looks at the Master Plan or SDAU (Schéma Directeur d'Aménagement Urbain). This Master Plan is a general framework providing guidelines to design development options and new urban areas, to localise various zones and areas to renovate, and to define cleaning up principles. On its basis, architects and urban planners implement the Planning Plan (PA), the Zoning Plan (PZ) and the Development Plan (PD). In Fez, an international architect and urban planner office managed by Michel Pinseau designed the last Master Plan that was approved in 1991 and is available until 2015. This Master Plan updates the one designed in the 1970s, the SDUF (Schéma Directeur d'Urbanisme de Fès), before the listing of the medina as a
75 Region of Fez Boulemane, Prefecture of Fez, Urban municipality of Fez, Arrondissement of Fez Medina.
109 World Heritage site. The Safeguard and Urban Agency of Fez (AUSF) provides the city with the Planning Plan and parts of the Master Plan. This public institution created by dahir 76 in 1991 is a local antenna of the Ministry of Housing, Urbanism and City Policy. Its main official document is the Code of Urbanism. In Fez, AUSF has a fourfold mission. It is responsible for urban planning, for controlling the conformity between urban projects and urban documents, for implementing urban and rehabilitation projects, and for helping private and public companies in the urbanism field. The adjective "Safeguard" is specific to the Fez Urban Agency, underlining its concern with heritage. In that aim, a cell, the conservation and safeguard of the medina, was created in 2001, but it had been discontinued by the time of my fieldwork time. Heritage is under the responsibility of the former Agency for the De densification and Rehabilitation of the medina, and what is known today as the Agency for the Development and the Rehabilitation of the Fez medina (henceforth ADER). Replacing the Fez City Safeguard Delegation (DSVF) created in 1978, ADER was born in 1989 as a public institution but it became a public limited company in the early 2000s because of financial problems – bribery within ADER and problems of public funding. This technical authority of the medina is invested with the mission to "carry out programmes related to the safeguarding of Fez according to governmental prerogative." It means fulfilling general aims – to adapt the medina to its demographic and economic evolution – as well as undertaking specific works – to prevent houses from collapsing, to rehouse inhabitants and activities moving out from the medina – and data collecting. ADER employees created a Geographic Information System (GIS) providing detailed data about the medina. This GIS includes maps 77 and detailed information about the two third of medina houses – up to 30 different features for each house. This database serves as a planning and management tool and provides the cartographic support for the rehabilitation plan launched by ADER in 1995 but now under the supervision of the Urban Agency. In the medina, ADER propped up buildings, set up tourism circuits assorted with a guidebook (Aouni and El Faïz, 2005) with the help of others institutions, and established three kinds of programmes to financially and technically help Moroccan inhabitants undertaking works in their house. The first is the emergency intervention when a house collapses or is about to do so. ADER takes in charge the propping up, the possible evacuation of inhabitants and demolition of the building. In the second programme, ADER funds 50% of the works. Owners of a house in decay must provide documents proving they own the house. They then get involved with ADER as they agree to restore their house in a traditional way, with the research department providing it with
76 Dahir n° 1.93.51 of Rabia I 1414 (10 Septembre 1993) about Urban Agencies. 77 Cf. appendix p. 367 for an example.
110 architectural documents, and with the restoration firm they choose. ADER pays the research department – maximum 7,000 Dh (about 625 €) – and half of the works' costs, estimated at maximum 120,000 Dh (about 10,700 €). ADER gives maximum 60,000 Dh (about 5,360 €) with a possible extension of 20,000 Dh (about 1,785 €) if the house is important or big. ADER undertakes any kind of work – except furnishing – with traditional materials – cedar wood for the ceilings, solid bricks for the walls, traditional mortars with sand and lime, mosaic. ADER funds 100% of the works in the last programme that concerns shored houses in serious decay. After a lawyer working for ADER has contacted the owner of the threatening house, and if the latter doesn’t answer or cannot afford them, ADER starts the works. In no case tourist accommodations are accepted. ADER employees generally face problems in the implementation of these programmes. First, they lack recognition among inhabitants. "Most people call us UNESCO. When they see people propping up houses, they say it is the State or UNESCO. They do not really know ADER, especially the illiterates" (Lamya, ADER technician). Also, "ADER is an administration, and its image is a bit... It is not usual for an administration to give money. Moroccan inhabitants think there is something behind" (Saad, former ADER employee). Moreover, inhabitants must evacuate during the works and find another place to stay while they have no money to rent another room. Jawad’s brother and his family, for instance, came to Jawad’s house during the 4 month restoration works in his house. To these problems, Saad added problems of overlapping competences with other institutions, such as the Urban Agency, and "communicational problems" mainly with the Inspection of Historical Monuments. Each institution sees the other as a rival while they are not in charge of the same missions. Finally, some employees pointed to the scarcity of human, material and economic resources. Strikes often occurred in 2011, but they didn't reach the 1999 result, that is to say the dismissal of the first director, Abdelatif Hajjami, accused of embezzlement and subsequently replaced by Fouad Serghini. Journalists for their part point out a lack of efficiency in the management of ADER. 78 For instance, a 30% financial help programme replaced the 50% one in 2007. Saad recalled that after the end of the World Bank project in 2006, the Moroccan Government couldn’t give the same amount of money in order to continue the 50% programme. The "failure" is also due to wider political purposes, "because ADER had its own strategy, but politicians decide everything. And after ‘aïn Khaïl [a mosque] collapsed [in 2003], 79 the most important was the ruin threatening programme. […] Politicians don't want ‘aïn Khaïl to happen again, they don't want dead people
78 For instance, http://www.leconomiste.com/article/fes crise de financement lader ; http://www.leconomiste.com/article/ader ca glande fes 79 ‘aïn Khaïl is a mosque that collapsed in 2003 killing 11 persons. For more information, here is the file related to the mosque: http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articlespdf/ain.pdf
111 anymore. And then, it is not up to the technician to decide. It is the public image of the medina that is at stake." ADER focused on ruins and houses threatening with collapse "because we are afraid of people dying," as Lamya said. Informants also criticised ADER for taking too much time and money and for employing unskilled "lambda civil servants." "In the house of my father, they [i.e. ADER] placed props inside 6 years ago. But they never came back! 6 years! People have time to die in 6 years! And the house is ugly! 6 years, it is too long," Omar declared. He also complained that the remaining funding be still too expensive in the context of the 30 or 50% financial help programme. "Why? Because they [i.e. ADER members ] want the house back to its initial state. I agree, but did the price of materials remained the same as before? Of course not! Prices are not the same as before." Finally, according to Fettah, ADER is a " association de façade " ("fictive association") wasting its time with small houses without any interested instead of restoring historically and architecturally valued houses. On the one hand, ADER doesn't satisfy the goals it was created for, namely to restore the medina and to train craftsmen. On the other hand, and most importantly, ADER employees do not work with the master craftsmen. "I'm sure ADER cannot replace the master craftsman’s opinion. It claims to do so, but it is unable to represent him, because it is an administrative organisation. But the master craftsman is a hand on man (field expert), who makes pragmatic and practical decisions. […] We should listen to the master craftsman. His opinion comes from experience, field practice, and not from a theory." Finally, heritage is the main responsibility of the Inspection of Historical Monuments. This administration belongs to the Ministry of Culture and, within the latter, to the Division of Cultural Heritage. As the medina has been a national heritage since 1954, the Inspection members control the respect of regulations about national heritage (laws related to the protection of monuments and sites). It means that no works can be undertaken in a listed building without the prior authorisation and the control of the Inspector. However, only 25 buildings are listed in Fez. The Inspection also represents UNESCO in Fez, as there is no UNESCO office in the city. The Inspector writes both the periodical report – every 6 years – and the state of conservation report – every 3 years – and informs UNESCO about huge projects and restoration works threatening the integrity and authenticity of the medina. The last time a UNESCO consultant came there was in 2009, for the Ouislane project (construction of a residential, commercial and tourist resort in the buffer zone).80 Beyond the medina, the Inspection is in charge of heritage, that is to say monuments and sites, in the Fez Boulemane region. Its action covers two main areas, namely listing heritage and undertaking works. The Inspector and its 8 employees carry out researches and inventories, and
80 http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2006/mis170 2005.pdf for the report.
112 propose and control files of cultural heritage elements to list. The Inspection members also undertake works in listed buildings. In 2006, the Inspection was in charge of excavations during the restoration works of the Qaraouiyine mosque and in 2011, it transformed the ablution room at the Bouanania medersa (i.e. a Koranic school) into an exhibition room. Finally, the Inspection members control restoration and rehabilitation works undertaken by other institutions and private owners in order to check their conformity to national heritage regulations. Hassan, a member of this Inspection, makes sure everybody respects official rules, "the rules of protection and the principles of restoration and rehabilitation." A restoration is a success "each time that a place is rehabilitated following the traditional way and with the monitoring of the Inspection." It means to attend to the commission delivering work permits, and to control on the field the work undertaken on the field. The Inspector mainly controls the respect of the architectural structure – the disposal, the plan of the house – and of the architectural decoration itself.
4.2.4. Work permits
Each of the aforementioned institution participates to issuing permits. Any work in a house and in the medina implies a work permit issued by the baladiya. Applicants submit a work request at the baladiya Plan Department that controls the conformity of the project to the Master Plan, the Planning Plan and the urban regulations. According to an architect of this department, "this Plan is the law, and anybody who does not respect it is refused [to carry on with works] until the plan is modified." In case of non conformity, the works have to be stopped until the problem is solved. There are three kinds of work permits. 81 A V1 (Voirie 1 or binaa ) authorises major changes, notably in the structure of the house – to destroy walls, or to build new rooms for instance. A letter of request and architectural plans – the location of the house, the existing building, the modifications, each of them according to different sections – compose a complete file. A commission headed by the President of the communal council and composed by several institutions controls the application and helps the baladiya according to their competence. The Urban Agency members check the conformity to urban plans, the Inspector of Historic Monument checks the respect of traditional architecture, the Firemen Service checks the security, the baladiya technicians and architects check the architectural plan. The baladiya health service, ADER, the national college of architects and technicians from RADEEF 82 are also part of this commission. A V2 (Voirie 2 or
81 Cf. appendix p. 368 for the leaflet given by the municipality about the kinds of work inhabitants can undertake and the relate files to submit to the municipality. 82 Régie Autonome Intercommunal de Distribution d'Eau et d'Electricité de Fès – Intercommunal Public Company of Water and Electricity Supply.
113 islah ) is necessary for minor changes. There is no need for a file with architectural plans, and no commission checks: the application is simply approved or not. There is also practice permit for tourist accommodations, to warrant the appellation guest houses and location de meublé.83 The baladiya issues the work permit, following the same steps than for a V1, but a second commission controls the practice permit request, which is issued by the Bacha (i.e. city Governor). Headed by members of the Ministry of Tourism, this commission is also composed of members of the Regional Tourism Council, of the Fire Service, of the Police and of the baladiya . They check the conformity to the Charter of Guest houses 84 enacted by the Ministry of Tourism in 2003. This Charter defines the guidelines to follow in order to be categorised and authorised as a tourist accommodation. For instance, guest houses should have at least five bedrooms with in suite bathrooms, traditional architectural decoration, and a room for the employees. Once he has the practice permit, the owner has to pay taxes and duties, such as the value added tax, a duty to the Ministry of Tourism of 8 Dh (0.7 €) per host and night and a duty to the municipality of 15 or 30 Dh (1.3 or 2.6 €) per host and night according to the category of tourist accommodation. In order to be fully official, the owner has to ask a third kind of permit 30 days after the practice permit has been approved. This permit is the listing as a guest house of first or second category, or as a location de meublé . A third commission issues this listing. The Ministry of Tourism, the Regional Tourism Council, the Regional Association of Guest houses85 (ARMH), the local authority ( qaïd of the neighbourhood) and both the Health Service and the Social and Economic Service of the Wilaya are part of the regional commission for listing. Owners of tourist accommodations can ask an alcohol license to the Sureté Nationale (National Safety) if they want to serve wine in their house. Another non compulsory but nonetheless highly recommended legal process when buying a house useful consists in the registration of the house at the land register. An adul (i.e. traditional notary) usually has all the information and official documents of the houses he is in charge of. However, a public notary is necessary to register the house, which costs money but allows avoiding bad surprises. For instance, Michel, a French resident, bought a non registered house. He hired a public notary who noticed that the former owner was not a 100% owner: somebody else owned 5% of the house. The adul didn’t know this person, but thanks to the public notary, this individual was found, his part bought, and Michel could become the full owner of the house.
Two weeks in the municipal archives gave me an overview of the work permit issuing
83 This permit is specific to Fez and concern houses with less than five bedrooms for welcoming guests. 84 Cf. appendix p. 370. 85 http://www.armh fes.com/
114 process. I went through the V1s issued between 1925 and 1982. 86 After they had received a file, the commission members wrote advice according to the respect of plans – architectural plans and the Master Plan –, the respect of tradition – no shop in a residential area, not to build oversized houses and rooms in detriment of the patio or the road, not too much openings to the street –, the historical value of the house and its age, the stability of the house – threatening ruin, threatening the neighbouring houses, too weak to support works, too dilapidated – and the threat of over population and public nuisance. In case of an approval, members of the commission underlined the necessity of the works to reinforce and restore buildings. In case of a deferral, they asked the applicant to conform to the original architectural plans, to suppress openings or a floor, to complete the file, to ask an official engineer to come, to take inspiration from the traditional architecture. Members of the commission refused a request when the works had been undertaken without any permit, or in a non building land. They then asked whether to stop the works, or to demolish what had been done. In any of the three cases, the municipal architect asked members of the urban department to check the conformity with the Master Plan. In no case did any member refer to heritage or the listing to justify an advice or a decision. Respect, tradition and official rules – but not heritage – were the main referents. The procedure has barely changed since the early 1980s. An architect working at the baladiya Plan Department however pointed out a shift in the kind and the number of permits issued. In the early 1980s and until 1997/98, most applicants were private owners asking to add a wall or a floor in their house, or to redo the rooftop waterproofing. The architect added that the number of issued permits raised in the early 1990. The baladiya issued 60 V1 in 1990, 10 in 1991, 24 in 1993 and 6 in 1994. It also issued 424 V2 in 1990, 484 in 1991, 600 in 1993 and 613 (out of 702 files) in 1994. These figures of work permit issued before the arrival of foreigners – who undertook numerous construction works – show that Moroccan inhabitants at least care about maintenance works. However, since the late 1990s, the Moroccan State and other institutions also ask work permits, with for instance the current project in R'Cif and Bin Lamdoun which consists in the improvement of the riverbanks. Private owners or tenants for their part apply less and less for permits because the cost of stamps needed to formalise a permit have been increasing steadily. For instance, in order to ask for a V2, the applicant needs to buy a 500 Dh (45 €) stamp, which used to cost 20 Dh (1.8 €) 30 years ago. Once the baladiya has issued the permit, the applicant has to pay 500 Dh (45 €) to the tax office for a stamp validating the permits for three months. This stamp can
86 With all the methodological precautions it supposes for each year, and a fortiori each file, is far from being complete. A civil servant working at the archives told me they lost many documents they moved to their new building six years earlier. Also, stories about civil servants burning archives are quite common.
115 be extended three times, after paying the same amount of money each time.
4.2.5. Bypassing the rules
This description of rules and legal procedures is essential in order to depict how applicants and members of institutions play with and behave in regards these rules and procedures. I remember of a particular sentence I didn't weight the importance of when the man, a foreigner who had shown his credentials to me, told me "Oh, but rules you know…." Precisely: I didn't know, and I shared this position of neophyte with many Moroccan and foreign informants. They had to deal with multiple institutions and to conform to numerous rules and it took them some time – as it took me – to have a clear overview of this multiplicity and its entanglements when it was not already too late and that inhabitants had become illegal. As a prelude, I want to emphasise that talking about the rules and regulations with informants was not always easy. Some – mainly foreigners – vividly talked about rules to criticise them after they had faced problems. But as a Moroccan guest house owner declared: "I cannot tell you. The President of the Guest house Association could give you more information. But I cannot tell you anything because I don't know anything." Generally, Moroccan inhabitants didn’t talk much about rules. Either they saw no problem with the rules or they pretended they didn't know anything. In the following, I didn't forget Moroccans, but as I didn't find a strong claim in Fez, I do not raise their voice in this written report.
Some informants directly bypassed the rules. They did not ask or respect permits. They did not ask because they did not know about the rules, or they considered asking for a permit to be a waste of time and money compared to the tiny works they aimed to undertake – to raise the height of a wall, to widen a window. According to a French resident, work permits and more particularly the V2, are ridiculous and "take the piss out of us!" Other informants considered that it was the role of the State to intervene and, in the absence of any intervention, they could do what they can, that is to say nothing or bypass the rules. Others did not ask – consciously or not – for the right work permit. One restored and improved several houses with V2, based on the fact that commissions were generally turning a blind eye on private houses. Sometimes, informants changed the nature of the works after they had asked for a permit and they had started the works. Foreigners who decided to turn their house into a tourist accommodation once they became aware the works cost too much money are a good case in point. As a consequence, since 2011, any applicant has to sign a written notification at the baladiya stating
116 that, not having asked for a guest house or location de meublé work permit, he is not going to undertake such works, or at least not without asking the baladiya for a new permit. According to an architect of the baladiya , this notification doesn't limit the owner's freedom to do what he wants with his house, but prevents problems as the rules for a house and for a tourist accommodation are different. Finally, informants did not call architects or follow their advices. On the one hand, a Moroccan shopkeeper restored several houses "and I never asked for an architect, not on my life!" On the other hand, Fettah underlined the fact that architects were unskilled to work in the medina as they were trained and had their office in the New City. They then couldn't know how houses work in the medina and how to restore them.
Pic. 24. Savage construction works. Credit: M. Istasse
Both Moroccans and foreigners bypassed the rules, but foreigners made a difference between themselves and Moroccans. The idea, shared by many foreigners, is that foreigners respect rules because they are used to them, while Moroccans know the system. A French resident asserted that "Moroccans pay bakshish [i.e. bribery] to have a swimming pool in their patio or to raise the high of the rooftop above the 13 legal centimetres, and they obtain permits because they know how it works." Some Moroccans added that foreigners might have difficulties with permits because they do not speak the language.
Aside from direct bypassing, many informants mentioned problems related to permits. Foreigners depicted a complex process and accused a lack of clear guidelines. A former ADER employee admitted that "there is a problem. Nothing is said about what is a good intervention on historic building, particularly to private owners. When they arrive and are eager to restore houses,
117 they should find laws, frameworks, or rules, something to undertake a proper intervention." Foreigners also mentioned the feeling of running in circles, as a foreign guest house owner, did. "It became clear within the first week that everything I had been told about why it is a good idea to invest in Morocco wasn't true. So much trouble. I needed a loan from the bank to do the restoration. To get the loan, I had to have a carte de séjour [i.e. residence permit ]. To get the carte de séjour , I had to have a practice permit to operate the guest house. To get this permit , you have to finish the restoration, which I couldn't finish without the loan. I was running in a circle." Foreigners finally complained about the gap between a Moroccan policy to attract foreign investors in the country and the difficulty to invest money once in Morocco. Although foreigners complained, they did not enter into an association to claim for more open procedures. Firstly, they were not aware of any institution or association able to help them. Secondly, they thought that powerful people managed institutions and looked for money instead of defending their members or citizens. Finally, after having faced their own problems, gone through their own processes and overcome their own hurdles, they were tired and didn’t feel like fighting anymore. As a consequence, they avoided problems by adopting and keeping a low profile. As a French guest house owner put it, "I want peace and tranquillity. Since the beginning, I follow the chameleon motto. That is to say I get lost in the crowd. Nobody can see me, I do not make waves." Nonetheless, a kind of common action occurred in 2006. A French guest house owner described it as such: "So, the Bacha [i.e. city Governor ] had heard about major problems in obtaining the practice permit. He organised a huge meeting at the Préfecture . It was in… let's say, we already had the suites [in our guest house], so let's say [it was in] 2006/2007. We were called in, as we didn't have the permit. […] And then it was very interesting. For once, all the authorities were present, and a lot of guest house owners had come. And everybody talked, and criticised openly how it had been difficult for them to have the permit. And [my husband] said 'Listen, honestly, it has been five years we have been waiting for the permit. We fit the rules. The commission came several times, and each time they added a new problem that is not justified.’ So the Bacha answered 'Now, I'm fed up with low status employees issuing permits while they aren’t skilled themselves, do not know what a guest house is, and have never travelled.' He said that in front of everybody. And, surprise , we were issued the permit the following day." This narrative is interesting for several reasons. First of all, this event occurred after many foreigners had complained to their Embassy or to the Regional or Prefecture authorities. Many foreigners told me they were at the base of this movement because their complaint was the decisive one. Secondly, it indeed resulted in a wave of permit issuing and in the punctual creation of a category – this category is now closed and is not delivered anymore – specific to Fez for houses
118 with less than five bedrooms, the location de meublé . Aside from this punctual event, there are two options to face the administrative complexities. With the first, applicants received the help of a high status employee. A French guest house owner went to the Mayor and received his help. "So, I went to the baladiya . And when I arrived, the same guy said 'But you cannot [have the permit].' So, I called the number [the Mayor had given to me] and I said 'I'm in front of him and he doesn't want.' And he answered 'Wait, do not move, stay where you are. Sparks will fly!' So I stayed in the office. And you know, in the office, there is nothing. A table, three pieces of paper. They are administrators, but you wonder where they store documents. And suddenly, I hear a phone ringing. I even didn't know where the phone was. I thought it was in a sugar box in a cupboard. So I heard, the guy opened a cupboard, took a phone, and I heard him repeating ' Wakha sidi, wakha. Wakha sidi, Wakha [i.e. Yes sir, of course sir ].' He said at least 25 wakha . He hang up and said 'Welcome in Morocco. You know important people in Fez. You will have the V2 in the following minute'." The second option is bribery.
3.2.5.1. Bribery 87
For some, bribery – more than corruption – rests at the core of the administrative system. "The matter is not to do it [i.e. undertaking construction works] correctly but whose palm you grease," said a foreign guest house owner. Everything becomes possible if you pay. A French guest house owner was not shy about telling people how he gave canned foie gras de canard to the qaïd (i.e. chief of a neighbourhood) in order to avoid problems. But in general, many informants held an anti bribery discourse and they claimed they had never partaken in it. They presented themselves as examples of no bribery paying. "Rules exist, one had to conform to them, and there is no problem." A foreign guest house owner decided not to pay anybody because employees in the administration rotate and he would have had to pay often. He obtained the work permit in 15 days and the practice permit in 20 days without paying any bakshish . Others, in spite of their anti bribery discourse, admitted they had to pay at some point. A French resident said, "you are trapped into a fishing basket, and you have no more choice. Even if people are kind, they always manage to lead you to the point where your only option is to pay." Anti bribery informants accused specific actors of fuelling the bribery system. Rich and
87 In their overview of the fight against corruption, scholars (Aboudrar, 2005) underline it has won in visibility and formality since the early 2000s, and more particularly since the recognition of Transparency Morocco in 1997. Other scholars try to understand its spread, perceptions and mechanisms (Rosen, 2002; Akesbi, 2008). As Rosen (id.: 3) put it, the "world of corruption" spread between the 1960s and 1970s, when it concerned mainly, and in a limited extent, public officials, and the 1980s and 1990s, when "rampant corruption" invaded even "the smallest matters of daily life" (Rosen, id.: 7).
119 powerful inhabitants constituted a first target. A French resident complained that "maybe rules exist, but their names are Benjelloun [i.e. a famous family name in Morocco] or so, they were part of a Ministry. So, they do what they want, and they do it badly. […] These people add windows where they want, whereas Westerners willing to add some air slits have to refill them up." A French tourist accommodation owner added jealousy and conspiracy as factors. "Some owners do not want too many tourist accommodations. So, they tell you it is to preserve the medina. But you realise it is not the reason. In fact, they want the whole cake for themselves." Foreigners were also accused. According to a foreign member of the Association of Guest houses, foreigners start works they cannot undertake, such as digging a swimming pool in the patio. They then face no other solution than bribery to continue their work, and they dare accuse Moroccans of being corrupt. A Moroccan nonetheless explained that Moroccans also do pay. "They know how it works. They do not negotiate. They give the money and it goes faster. The others, Westerners, they try to make it legally. So they wait, they wait. And as long as you do not give money, what do they do? They ask you to come back again, until you understand you have to give money." In this discourse we find the three main features of the bribery system, namely time pressure, knowing how the system works, and the behaviour of employees. A French tourist accommodation owner mentioned he paid a bakshish because of time pressure: he had only 15 days left to finish the file and needed to hurry it up. On the other hand, informants who claimed not having paid any bribe underlined, sometimes with pride, the loss of time and energy they endured. Also, learning how the system works favours bribery practices. As a foreign resident said, "you can try to conform to the rules, but it is not how it is working here." She concluded that in Morocco, there is the good way, which means to have the permits but not to do what you want with the house; and the wrong way, which means to pay a bakshish and to do what you want. Foreigners finally linked bribery to the behaviour of employees. According to a foreign resident, Morocco has inherited the administrative system from the Protectorate, but nowadays, "nobody faces his responsibilities [in this system]; it is part of the local culture." The bribery system is even more complex because the different public authorities do not always communicate with each other. The foreign manager of a construction company had a building site closed by the moqadem (i.e. representative of the Government in a neighbourhood) because of a missing paper in the file for the work permit. This manager had however given the complete file to the baladiya and wondered why he had to go to the baladiya to ask the administrator to call the moqadem while this latter didn't intend to look for the paper at the baladiya .
120 This list of problems related to the rules 88 shouldn’t make one think that everybody criticised and bypassed the rules. A Moroccan guest house owner declared that "difficulty to obtain permits is not so bad, if things are serious. For instance, the State and the authorities say 'If we deliver permits to everybody, the city will turn into a big mess.' And it is good for business competition." Also, according to a Moroccan member of the Association of Guest houses, it is better to have hard rules with the possibility to let go by, instead of having easy rules that lead to anarchy. As such, rules prevent Fez from becoming like Marrakech, "where things go haywire."
3.2.5.2. Legality and ruses
The issue of the legal or illegal, the normal or abnormal is at the core of works undertaking in the Fez medina. The definition of these words may vary according to the person, the situation and the period of time. Rosen (2002) reports how Moroccans perceived corruption through the words they used. He comes to the conclusion that corruption is "the failure to share with those with whom one has forged ties of dependence any largesse that comes one's way. Corruption is, in the Arabic idiom, to 'eat the good things that should be shared with others" (Rosen, id.: 13). Corruption is then a matter of perceiving and dealing with others as socially constructed and situated persons whose attributes vary according to the situation. Nobody is corrupt by nature, and the same act belongs to corruption or not according to the relations in the situation. 89 The definition of the legal and the normal differs between members of institutions and inhabitants. Designers, urban planners and members of institutions implement standardised rules instead of taking account of the living heritage and daily practices of inhabitants. In Fez, the Inspector of Historical Monuments is concerned with the preservation of architectural layout and features even if it prevents from an efficient use of the house while dwellers rather aim to change a steep staircase or to bring light in a dark house costing money in terms of electricity. Inhabitants on
88 Problems with rules in historic centres are not specific to Fez. Hsu (2005) underlines the powerless effect of rules for safeguarding houses in the historical centre of Troyes. This could go as far as letting the housing collapse to obtain its demolition. Herzfeld (1991) for his part investigates the conflicts between owners in the Old Town of Rethemnos and official regulations over the colours, forms and ornaments owners can use in their restoration works. Owners then challenge the legitimacy of this "regime of surfaces" (Dorst, cited in Herzfeld, 1991: 13) by going behind the surfaces. By negotiating and bargaining with the tax system, by undertaking works without waiting the help of the historic conservation office, by exerting pressure on the Ministry of Culture to get reimbursed for the works undertook in accordance with the rules, by accusing the bureaucrats of being thieves, by criticising a very erratic money supply from the State and the arbitrariness of financing, by opposing creative reinterpretations of the permits to the necessary documentation asked by bureaucrats to support any conservation action, inhabitants of Rethemnos contest the monumental time which, under the form of conservation practices, brought rupture, radical changes, and destructions of the familiar. 89 Scholars (Miller, 1988; Navez Bouchanine, 1991, 1994; Gravari Barbas, 2005) put to the fore appropriation beyond legality and normality.
121 their side do not feel they bypass the rules when they had comfort in their house or when they remove architectural decoration, such as mosaic or carved plaster, they dislike. Being a foreign or a Moroccan inhabitant constitutes a second distinction in the definition of the normal and the legal. Both bypass the rules for different reasons. Similarly to what Guedez (2004) shows in the French Landes, newcomers give priority to "the site," its harmony, its environment and its beauty. They intend to undertake the works themselves, as far as possible. In their view, typicality, oldness, authenticity and harmony constitute the norms to reach even if they have to bypass the rules. For instance, in Fez, they dig a swimming pool in the courtyard or they add features at odds with the Fassi style. For newcomers know almost nothing about houses and their architecture in Morocco, their norms of authenticity and typicality differ from those of experts who follow the rules of urbanism, architecture and heritage. Moroccan inhabitants for their part give importance to the clean and the tidy, whatever the rules. The house is first and foremost utilitarian and is most of the time well kept, but rarely entirely renovated. Moroccan inhabitants see permits as useless for the maintenance works, and favour their comfort to what is legal. Rather than to speak in terms of deviance, De Certeau (1984) defines the notion of tricks in his study of everyday practices. Investigating the "clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and make shift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of 'discipline' " (De Certeau, id.: xiv xv), he asserts that consumers "make innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules" (De Certeau, id.: xiii xiv). In his view, a strategy is "the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated" (De Certeau, id.: 35 36). A strategy is then related to space, creating its own place of power, distinguished from the environment, and lasting in time. While a tactic is "a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. […] The space of a tactic is the space of the other" (De Certeau, id.:37). A tactic is then a ruse, a trick taking advantage of opportunities, creating surprises, and characterised by an absence of power. As such, "a tactic is an art of the weak" (De Certeau, id.: 37) which make the best use of time as possible. In different words but a similar vein, Morin (1990: 132, my translation) writes that "in the animal reign, tricks induce the other into error, while strategy consists in avoiding and correcting these errors as soon as possible." It would be easy to assert that members of institution apply strategies and try to correct errors, while inhabitants implement tactics and try to cheat public authorities. On the one hand, both inhabitants and members of institutions use the rules in a strategic purpose. They call for institutions, rules and expertise, that is to say external and powerful places, in order to support their
122 arguments and actions. For instance, some informants print all the rules available and create a file to guide their work and to prove they are following the rules. The Inspector of Historical Monuments referred to the UNESCO listing or laws related to heritage in order to support his view. Herzfeld (1991) underlines that conservation bureaucrats push to a strict reading of the law and implement standardised rules while they are neither heartless nor choice less victims of the State teleology. "They, too, are situated actors struggling to bend partly recalcitrant boundaries. While their assigned task is to reinforce the monumentalization of official time, through acts of commemoration on the one hand and through their insistence on the eternal validity on the law on the other, in practice, they must confront an enormous array of decisions to be made and risks to be taken" (Herzfeld, id.: 13 14). On the other hand, both inhabitants and members of institutions play with the official rules and create a specific and punctual relation with each other. Official rules related to work permits give enough opportunities for these places and relations to develop. Rules are unclear. There is no list of document to provide (or at least this list changes from one institution to the other) and constrains are expressed in very general terms (no definition of the authentic architectural layout or decoration the Inspector of Historical Monument aims to preserve). It then gives room for both inhabitants and members of institution to interpret the rules and to play with them. Also, institutions lack resources to implement and fulfil their mission. They exert a limited control. As a consequence, inhabitants may initiate works without permit while members of institution may try to "make the most" of any control. Neighbours and local authorities sometimes denounce illegal works but inhabitants or members of institution who remunerate their cooperation sooner or later integrate them into the game. More than determining what is legal, illegal, normal or abnormal and drawing a complex typology of their numerous variations, the approach in terms of strategies and tactics sheds light on the way people engage into a situation that is shared – peaceful – or not – contentious. In this context, the definition of bribery and rule bypassing is less important than the definition of this common situation, the ways to trick and ruse. Recognising and defining this situation involves learning these everyday practices.
4.2.6. Construction works as a learning process
A French couple willing to buy a house in order to open a guest house invited me to visit a house with them. We met the estate agent at R'Cif square and then went to the house. The couple came with two Moroccan friends: Hassan, their business partner and also a tourist guide, and Driss,
123 a builder and also the owner of a bazaar. This latter was expected to assess the amount of work in time and money. During the visit, Hassan and Driss knocked on the walls while applying an ear on them, jumped on the ground on the first floor and carefully looked at ceilings to spot rotten or removed gaïza (i.e. beams). On the rooftop terrace, Driss counted the length and the width of the house, before announcing the price of the construction works: 62,000 € and six months to complete everything. This description introduces the problems encountered when undertaking construction works in a house. Inhabitants can decide to be the leader of the construction site, to manage and direct the works and workers. Moroccans often choose this option, as well as some foreigners, such as Sarah, a French resident who decided to do so "to keep contact with the house during the works." Undertaking construction works is then a full time job. Or inhabitants can hire a company specialised in construction works and managed by Moroccans or foreigners who have a certain experience. According to Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, hiring a professional is important because "when you strip down the house and lay it bare, you already have to know what you want to run through the walls." Unfamiliar with the Moroccan administration, foreigners, even if they had hired a construction company, described the whole process as a nightmare, or at least a difficult moment. They spent more money than expected. Benoit at the beginning intended to spend 600,000 Dh (about 53,500 €) for the works, but the final budget ended up being the double of this figure. Money is generally problematic, because traditional materials are expensive and workers have to be paid for any additional work. Time is also problematic, because the more the work period lasts, the more people suffer from this endless experience and get depressed. Moreover, the works most of the time lasted longer than expected – the whole process lasts between 1.5 to 5 years or more – and the permits were more difficult to obtain than expected. Michel, a French resident, adapted the title of this movie "Works, we know when they start, not when they are going to finish" to the Fassi case. Finally, Moroccans sometimes felt sorry for foreigners who "do not know" and hire, for instance, workers asking for more money and providing a work of lesser quality. Nonetheless, two kinds of discourse act like safety valves. The first concerns the shared experience. "We all experience it [problems with the works] you know," or "everybody faces the same problems with those old and complex houses." The second, for those who survived the nightmare, is a discourse of pride and victory. "We had a hard time, really, and most of the time, people do not understand it. You must experience it [in order to understand it]," said a French guest house owner.
124 Aside from these widely shared problems, foreigners face many punctual surprises. A first kind of surprise concerns the state of the house before and after the works. One may rely on the good exterior aspect of the house but discovers a crack in a load bearing wall, or rotten warqa (i.e. layer of wood supporting earth and sand separating two floors) or gaïza (i.e. wooden beam). Some building company managers refuse to make precise quotes or to give deadlines because they never know what they will find in the walls and ceilings after stripping them. After the works were finished, Gigi had to content herself with a "non functional" kitchen full of dead angles and lost space because the workers didn’t follow the plan. Workers are also a kind of surprise. According to foreigners, they "never do what you want," and "you always have to control them" and motivate them with money for them not to go to other building sites while working for you. In Benoit’s house, workers set the taps at the wrong place in a bathroom, and Benoit had to remove the mirror, and then to redo the tadelakt (i.e. shiny and waterproof coating made of lime and water) damaged by the mirror removal, to make a new mirror with the holes for the taps at the right place. Also, workers never finish works perfectly and they "lack good taste." They do not respect the work of others: when stripping the wood with acid, they do not protect the plaster that is partly destroyed by the acid running down. Finally, they are not professionals, and sometimes are untrained. As Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, put it, most of the time, workers were "selling vegetables yesterday and improvised themselves workers when the boom in the building business created jobs." Also, most workers do not travel and have never experienced any other technique, while those who have been to Marrakech or to Europe show more creativity and flexibility. Above all, the lack of a shared language between foreigners and workers sometimes brings problems in terms of mutual understanding. Facing these surprises, some foreigners spoke of a learning experience. Many of them arrived in Fez as neophytes or handymen. "When I arrived, I didn't know anything. So, at first, I hired an architect and his team. And it was very difficult because as I didn't know anything, he could do what he wanted with me, I have to admit. […] Then, after 6 months, I fired him. And I fired his team too because the workers didn't do a good job. So, I hired other workers. At that time, I knew a bit more, I had learnt a bit by visiting other building sites and talking with several persons. Thus, I became the chef chantier ." The story of Guy, a French tourist accommodation owner, is by no means an exception, as a lot of foreigners recognised they had been cheated because they didn't know where to ask for permits or which workers to hire. Ruth learnt "to think building site," to know that the works start from the rooftop and end in the patio. Inhabitants also visit each other to have a look at the house and to exchange advice about how to do, who to employ, which materials to use. Gigi didn't know Morocco before settling in the
125 country that she discovered with living in the house. "I didn't know the Moroccan architecture at all. In my country, in Provence or in Ivory Coast, walls are white and you hang things on them. You decorate with things and paintings. But here, it is the opposite. You cannot decorate the main rooms. You have zelij [i.e. mosaic ], wood, painted wood, plaster, everything at the same time. The first time I entered the house, I wondered 'Where should I look? What should I understand?' It was even tiring at the beginning, to see all of this." L earning was at the core of her experience, as it is for numerous foreigners: "the more I am [in the house], the more I learn, the more I discover it, the more I dissect it, the more I know it." Learning relates to the mutual relation one ties with other people. Antoine had to teach his workers to build Japanese stairs. Abdelaziz was amazed with the technique intended to protect the mosaic on the ground. "They [i.e. the workers] lay gummed paper on the ground, and then they chuck plaster on it. It is an awesome protection for the ground." Learning may also correlate the country and the culture. Gigi described the restoration works as particularly exhausting, both physically and morally. As a newcomer, she did not know anybody and had no experience in restoration works. She had to learn everything at the same time – the language, the country, the administrative process – and declared she learnt the Moroccan society through the restoration works. Finally, beyond developing knowledge, informants sometimes inscribed this experience of restoring a house in Fez in a long term learning process, like Benoit. "There are steps in a life, aren’t they? I have flats in Paris, small flats of 15 or 20 square meters. I furnished them in my way. It is my cup of tea. Then, I bought a house in Marrakech. I embellished it. I improved an already existing house. I wanted to continue with building a house, creating everything. But it was impossible in Fez, because I didn't find a ruin big enough. So, it will be the next step." Undertaking works is also described as a social and human experience. Abdelaziz, the Morocco French guest house owner, claimed his project was first and foremost "undoubtedly social. When the project started, I insisted for the builders to declare their workers. And it was by no means easy because the builders are fuckers. You can write this too. They are donkeys. They do not invest in human beings; they use workers as very cheap labour. They do not declare them, they do not take care of them, they do not invest in their training." The managers of a construction company made of work ethics their leitmotiv.90 "The founders of Andalus Renovation, with their initial purchase (Dar Ourbia), wanted to bring as a personal initiative their contribution in the improvement of the workers' work conditions. Also, they made their best to integrate their project in the social frame of the medina, in order to make their investment beneficial to inhabitants." They then favour the employment and training of young
90 http://darzarafa.design.officelive.com/default.aspx
126 people, and insist on security, be it physical on the building site (they provide tools such as helmets and building site shoes) or social (they insure good salaries, days off and holidays, an Axa complementary insurance for accidents, and a registration at the CNSS 91 as well as French lessons for the workers who want them). This social concern is presented as a guarantee for a work of quality, less expensive and faster. But reality doesn't fit these praiseworthy goals, as Valentin explained, not without humour: "with our desire to make the best, we made the worst." For instance, they provided the workers with tools, helmets, gloves, and overalls. The neighbours considered they had too much money to spend, and asked them money for everything and nothing. More modestly, Antoine said he assured his workers that they would have a salary the whole year. Thanks to this, some got married, or bought a flat in the New City. The social aspect also lies in the relation with workers and neighbours. According to Michel, restoration remains a social process, due to the centrality of human beings: they, and not houses, initiate the process. Also, relations are central, because unlike Europe, conventions – work contracts, requirements – are not respected. In Morocco, the human and the relational overtake the technical and the conventional. But having good relations with the workers does not prevent you from defects and irregularities in the procedure and results. Michel, a French resident, always remained careful not to be too familiar, because "all the Moroccan I know tried to screw me over, whatever our degree of friendship." Talking about their relations with neighbours, Marc and François, two French tourist accommodation owners, argued that foreigners have to find a balance between two stances: "The Orient is wonderful," and "I bring money to this country," between the dreamer who will be cheated after a short time and the "new colonizer." Respecting people is the main matter. For instance, they always asked the neighbours before undertaking major and noisy works, and did not consider houses of the neighbours as "shit." Evelyne, a French guest house owner, represents a good example of a social experience close to networking. After she had a problem with her Moroccan business partner, a former friend and colleague who opened his own guest house with the money of Evelyne – the affair ended in a common settlement after a 3 year lawsuit – Evelyne faced a critical situation. She received an injunction to demolish everything in the house because she had received no legal work permit. She was forbidden to open a guest house and she had no more money as her bank account was empty. "So I went to meet Chabat, the mayor of Fez," whom she knew because "I came in Fez a few years earlier for humanitarian work in the medical field. And when you work in such a field, you come to know a lot of people. It opens you a lot of doors. We were invited to all the meetings with the Fassi, with the high society of Fez. I got along well with a lot of people. I had a lot of contacts, in
91 Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale – National Social Security Fund.
127 particular with Omar. I really felt comfortable with him. So when I had this problem with [this friend], I called Omar for him to come and see the works. […] They helped me, they told me to meet Chabat." McGuinness and Mouhli (2013) also report on the relation between the architectural material forms, the social practice of restoration and the meaning foreigners, who generally bought without any experience of construction works, give to this practice. They argue these works are a major stage in the appropriation of the house because foreigners come to know the city at the same time as they develop knowledge and human relations. For instance, foreigners have to learn the rules of construction works, that is to say the techniques of work and the material to use. They do so by chatting with other foreigners who experienced these works. In this context, McGuinness and Mouhli (id.) make of the house a place of transformation (to become "Fassi") and of communication.
This approach of the construction works as a learning and social experience sheds light on the inclusion of these works in a wider process than mere administrative and technical procedures. The success of such works depends on the networks of those undertaking the works and of those hired to work. The specific focus on foreigners in no ways means that Moroccans do not learn, create or fuel social networks when going for construction works. Building sites and street cafés are glaring places for builder workers to exchange about their experience, knowledge and know how. However, the investigation of Moroccan social and learning experiences has to be deepened.
4.2.7. Conclusion
In this chapter, I described houses at the core of construction works. Both Moroccans and foreigners living in the medina go for such works. Rather than heritage, values such as oldness, respect, tradition and authenticity in their opposition with fake, modernity and comfort influence their work experience. As regards members of institutions, official rules frame their experience when they issue permits and oversee additions and repairs to private houses. But Moroccans, foreigners and even these members bypass the rules. Houses under construction are a starting point to investigate distinctions between categories of actors. Foreigners and Moroccans generally take opposite stances when it comes to the values guiding the works. Foreigners favour the beldi qdim (i.e. old traditional) while Moroccans prefer the beldi rumi (i.e. new traditional) and sometimes even the rumi jdid (i.e. new modern). Also, inhabitants, be they Moroccans or foreigners, do not agree with members of institutions about the
128 efficiency of public programmes and most of the time criticise them. Last but not least, rules separate Moroccans supposed to know them and how to bypass them; and foreigners, who try to respect the rules and have to learn how to bypass them. The house in construction then shows a first kind of network, a first way to engage with the materiality of houses through the works, the materials, the rules, the members of institutions, the builder workers, the inhabitants. These latter, after they finished "building" their house, still have to furnish and decorate it.
129 4.3. Furnishing and decorating a house
De Certeau (1984) invites us to investigate the remembering of one’s past, one’s history or even one’s identity through the description of home furniture and decoration – not the architectural decoration of the house. Dassié (2010) shows in her ethnology of intimacy that pieces of furniture and decoration may be " objects d’affection " ("affective objects"). In addition to being souvenirs for people to talk about and to remember the past, affective objects concentrate deep and/or a wide array of emotions. More than their functional, aesthetic or economic features, this affective thickness makes their value in their owner's eye. Affective objects are also a showcase for identity and a place of transmission. Affective objects constitute "pieces for confession" (Dassié, id.: 6), inducing their owners to reveal intimate biographies. As a consequence, Dassié (id.) calls for starting from material objects integrated in the intimate daily life in order to grasp emotions and identities gravitating around them. In Fez, foreigners brought furniture from their home country or from their trips, healthy Moroccans bought or received Western furniture from the early 20 th century, Moroccan inhabitants keep furniture from their parents in the house. This furniture is therefore affective to some extent. But informants also talk about the various styles of furnishing and decoration and about the principles they followed, and they judge each others' interiors. Styles relate to categorisations, principles to prescriptions or ideas about how to do, and judgements consist in evaluations in terms of taste, that is to say somebody’s ability to furnish and decorate that results in a proper aesthetic. In that view, taste is not only a personal and subjective matter as Bourdieu (1984) and Miller and Clarke (1999) assert. "Good taste" is also an award conceded following a judgement based on several criteria.
4.3.1. Styles
I sketched out 7 main styles of furnishing and decorating a house. Informants referred to these categories of style not to inscribe themselves or their house in one category, but to comment on other houses and to compare them with their own house.
130
1. 2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
Pic. 25. Styles of furnishing and decoration. Credits: M. Istasse
131 The Arab Andalus style (1), the typical style of Fez, relates to architectural decoration more than inhabitants’ furniture and decoration. Informants referred to it when they described their house in a general way, when they inscribed it in the history of Fez. This style and its features find their roots in "Al Andalus," the empire extending from Ghana in the south to Alger in the east and Spain in the north between the 11 th and the 15 th centuries. It anchored in Morocco thanks to the arrival of Andalus migrants, be they Muslim or Jews, after the conquest of Spain by Christian Kings in 1492. According to Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, "we cannot find it [i.e. the Arab Andalus style] elsewhere. And of course, all this spirit is inspired by Moorish art. After nearly 8 centuries of Arab presence in Andalusia, when Arabs came back, 80% of them came to Fez, and they brought this wonderful architecture. And today, on television, I see the Granada Palace, the red palace, the Alhambra. I see all this plaster, all this wood that is the same you find here in the mosques and houses." The Fassi typicality of the Arab Andalus style also lies in its opposition to the Berber or Sahara style of Marrakech. On the basis of the pictures I showed them, many informants declared that zelij (i.e. mosaic) is specific to Fez is while thuja characterises furniture in the South. Swimming pools in the patio or on the rooftop and tadelakt (i.e. coating of lime and water) on the ground and the walls are among marrakchi (i.e. from Marrakech) features. Some informants declared Marrakech is not a Moroccan city anymore. According to the Moroccan President of the Guest houses Association, in Marrakech, "everything is made for the bazaar. It is not Morocco anymore. It is India. This city corresponds to an imported image." Informants finally linked this style to the Merinid period (13 th to 15 th century). When I visited his house, Antoine associated decorative features to dynastic styles. The paintings reflect a Merinid style, the "heads of capitals are more rough. This kind of acanthus leave, it is the Alaouite style. […] It depends on the period. The Alaouite period is very sober. Any kind of decoration, even floral was banished. When you look in some houses, you don't see any painting on the wood. It was natural wood, sometimes framed by sticks to underline the shape. There was religious fundamentalism at that time, and decoration followed the trend." Michel, a French resident, also insisted on his respect for the Merinid style when he restored his house. Nonetheless, he sacrificed the Merinid tradition by adding comfort elements such as electricity, water, heating, and some windows with Iraqi glass. "But it doesn’t shock the eye. It is aesthetically well done." Both Antoine and Michel mentioned books and the Internet as the main sources of inspiration and knowledge to come back to or to learn about an architectural feature or a period of time. Books about architecture in Fez (Golvin, Revault and Amahan, 1985) or decoration in Morocco (Paccard, 1981) clearly categorise houses and decorative features in periods and dynasties.
132 Carved wooden doors replaced painted doors through time, inside balconies appeared in the 17 th century while the half circle window with Iraqi glass above rectangular windows in the patio are typical of the 19 th century, simple and humble patterns characterise the Almoravid period (11 th and 12 th centuries) because the sultans of this dynasty promoted puritanism in religion and art, houses built in the early or mid 20 th century present Art Deco features. In scrutinising a house, its layout and its architectural decoration, one can tell approximately when the house was built and which period of the Arab Andalus style it belongs to. For instance, the Almoravid acanthus leave is not similar to the Merinid one. As the Arab Andalus style is in a way common to most of the medina houses, inhabitants customise their house with furniture and decoration.
Numerous Moroccan inhabitants described the rural or Berber style (2) as a foreign way of furnishing mainly found in guest houses owned by Moroccans or foreigners. Informants mentioned the Riad Lune et Soleil, owned by a German French couple, as a glaring example of this style. And the owners agreed. "I would say nearly rural you know. We didn't do a very urban choice. […] The house really reflects Moroccan crafts. There are also some urban tracks, but really [my husband] and I... We liked so much craft in general and the rural world in Morocco that it stands out in the decoration." On the basis of the pictures I showed, informants defined features of the rural style such as a low ceiling, wickerwork and bejmat (i.e. ceramic rectangular tiles) on the ground. Rural, peasant, rustic, countryside are among the words informants used to describe it. In private houses, the Berber or rural style may become an African style with decorative elements such as masks, doors, shutters, and statues from Sub Saharan Africa. Sarah, a French resident, said she would bring "some things from home, from France. Mostly things to hang up on the wall. I have plenty of paintings, and African batiks, and statues. So, I think I will put my small African touch in decoration." Many foreigners decorated with objects they brought back from their trips in Sub Saharan Africa. They justified that decoration by the location of Fez at the crossroad of African pilgrimage and trade roads and by the presence of numerous objects from Sub Saharan Africa in antique shops and bazaars.
Antique pieces of Italian, French, British or even Lebanese furniture characterise the Western style (3). Both wealthy Moroccans and foreigners referred to and adopted this style. The former bought the furniture left by the French deserting Fez after Independence in 1957 – one can still find numerous old Western objects in flea markets. As Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, said "we find them [i.e. Western pieces of furniture] because we don't have to forget the history of France in Morocco. The French spent a lot of time in this country and they lived door to door with
133 Moroccans. The French felt at home in Morocco. A lot of them left and a lot of them stayed. And those who left they sold what they had and that's why we can still find French things here." Moroccans also mentioned the long tradition of Fassi merchants bringing furniture from their trips to Europe. Foreigners for their part brought furniture from Europe. Simon and Caroline, a French couple owning a guest house, took with them many paintings belonging to their family. Rather than obeying a "foreigner whim," they wanted a house that would be as familial as possible. François and Marc, two French tourist accommodation owners, had a more expatriate like justification: "Our approach was to bring some things from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, knowing that we are expatriates, we need... because it is quite poor in terms of furniture here." Others kept some objects, such as a gramophone and a sewing machine, which belonged to the former Moroccan owners. Foreigners also buy antiquities in flea markets. Loïc, a French guest house owner, bought a wall wooden clock in a flea market and hung it up in the salon. According to him, this clock is not at odds in the house because Moroccans have such clocks in mosques. Amélie, a French guest house owner, went further to explain and justify the presence of clocks. "It [i.e. wall wooden clock] was an important fashion! It goes back, unless I'm wrong, to Louis XIV right? When Moulay Ismaïl was in Meknes and he had clocks exchanges with France."
Informants described the minimalist or modern style (4) by its pure and simple lines, its minimal furnishing and few decorative objects, and the use of iron and glass. The nebula of words used to describe it turns around simplicity. Looking at the pictures I showed her, Christina, an American resident, declared about an interior she identified as minimalist (picture 2 in the appendix p.319), "there is no zelij [i.e. mosaic ], but tadelakt [i.e. coating of lime and water ] on the ground. It is lighter and there is not so much furniture. The bed is white, well, beige. It is elegant. […] It doesn't lack cachet, but it is less handcrafted. Lines are lighter, more uncluttered." In addition to Riad Laroussa, Dar Seffarine and Dar Bensouda, Benoit's guest house belongs to this minimalist style. He wanted as little wood as possible. He set doors with a metal framework filled with glass and shutters in iron. He tiled the ground with marble and not mosaic, removed the fountain in the patio and painted the walls in white and grey colours. He didn't want a Moroccan salon with banquettes and limited Moroccan decoration to a minimum in favour of, among others, signed pictures of opera stars. Some foreigners spoke in terms of fusion style, like Olivier, a Belgian resident, and his "mixed furnishing." He wanted the patio and the ground floor to emit "a strong atmosphere" and "a character, a strong cachet of authenticity" with a furnishing following "the pure Fassi tradition." On
134 the contrary, the floors host a more uncluttered style with "Scandinavian furniture, simple lines, and Zen stuff." The minimalist style also links to homemade furniture from retrieved objects. For instance, Emma, an Australian tourist accommodation owner, made a desk with a former wood door, covered with glass and fit on a wrought iron framework. "It is simple, but so beautiful."
Two minor styles constitute the Moroccan style, namely the familial style (5) and the traditional Fassi style (6). The first is mostly found in guest houses while the second characterises most of the Moroccan inhabited houses. Many foreigners disliked both styles for being over decorated. Looking at the pictures – mainly the pictures 9 and 13 (cf. appendix p. 320) – I showed them, they exclaimed, "it is disgusting," "please, is this for real? It is a cinema set, right?" or "is it a real house or a post card?" They massively commented on the familial Moroccan style whose current features they spotted – cables hanging from the rooftop to the ground, satellite dish, television(s), clothes drying on the internal windows, glass shelves full of items, pictures, silverware or messy rooftop terraces. According to Gigi, "there was no style in Morocco. There are carpets, kānūn [i.e. coal burner in clay], banquettes and round low table. Baraka [i.e. that's it]." Foreigners also considered the Moroccan style as being "too much," with too many different colours, too many different materials, too much furniture and decoration in shelves and display cabinets that do not always match. They usually used the terms "bling bling," "lack of harmony" and "kitsch" in their description. Gigi exclaimed, "Moroccan colours, the Virgin Mary Blue and the hot pink, are not for me! Fabrics are heavy and brocades richly coloured. Moroccans have this habit of doing too much. They need to show that they have a lot, that it shines. There is already a lot to see around, so if you add richly coloured fabrics, it is too much for the eye's comfort." According to her, the fact that Moroccans "make errors of taste is completely Moroccan. […] There is no harmony, no decoration in their houses. They buy beds full of volutes, because the Moroccan likes when there are things and that it is heavy, overly ornate. Typical Usually, Moroccan rooms are not pretty." For their part, Moroccans generally disliked a lack of furniture and decoration. Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, declared about the same picture that Evelyn categorised as minimalist that "the walls are empty. It is not so good. It is empty. There is no carpet, there is nothing." They also distinguished the traditional Fassi style and the familial style. Decoration and harmony constitute a first touchstone in this distinction. Looking at a picture, which he guessed had been taken in a familial house (picture 14 in the appendix p. 321), Omar, a Moroccan guest house employee, declared that "Moroccans inhabit this house. It is not a guest house. Have you seen the decoration? It is nonsense." About the same picture, Diya, a Moroccan resident asserted that "[i]t is
135 the decoration of the people." Order and cleanliness are a second basis for a distinction between the styles. Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, said that in "the real Moroccan life, the house is not well kept up."
Pic. 26. "Kitsch" display cabinet in a Moroccan house. Credit: M. Istasse
Last but not least, many informants made the distinction between the private or familial style and the tourist or hotel style. Jean Pierre, a French guest house owner, wouldn't have dug a swimming pool in the patio if the house had been his private house. Aziz, a Moroccan manager of a guest house, said that kaftan (i.e. traditional clothe) hung up on the walls, coffee mills or old suitcases for decoration are not found in Moroccan private houses. Air conditioning is another example, as Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, explained. "In the summer, it is very hot here. Houses are naturally air conditioned because Fez is located in a valley and is surrounded by the Middle Atlas Mountains. Fez is in a hole, so that the sun doesn't come to the bottom, and that's why traditional houses with zelij [i.e. mosaic] are fresh. We don't need any air conditioner. I don't need any air conditioner. But it is a plus for tourists." Within the tourist style, informants distinguished the home stay, the guest house and the hotel. Mohammed, a Ziyarates member, said that "in guest houses, furniture is more luxurious but less handcrafted. In Ziyarates houses, it is more familial." According to him, a guest house is luxurious by definition. If he wanted to open a guest house in his house "we [would] need a lot of sheets. Tables also, traditional ones, very expensive. We need to put zelij beldi [i.e. traditional mosaic] on the walls. We have to change everything inside, to give it another style that is traditional and sophisticated. Now, it is traditional familial." About the picture they automatically categorised
136 as a hotel (picture 6 in the appendix p. 319), informants declared that "I feel more in a five stars hotel. Yes, I feel more in this spirit than in a traditional guest house" (Amélie, French guest house owner), or "There, it is the style of hotels, hotels Novotel hotels. It is normal. It is modern, it is a hotel" (Hamza, Moroccan guest house owner). This overview of styles through informant’s comments shows that furniture and decoration matter to them. Before coming to judgements concerning the fittings, I present the various guidelines informants told me they followed in furnishing and decorating their house.
4.3.2. Principles of furnishing and decoration
To furnish their house, informants follow several principles – not to say norms. I present them according to their importance for informants and their frequency in discourses. Economic incentives undoubtedly guide the manner to furnish the house. Although few informants mentioned it as such, money often appears to be a constraint. Some foreigners ran out of money at the end of the construction works and they started with cheap and second hand furnishing. Evelyne, a French guest house owner, recalled that she "didn't have a penny. I couldn't allow making the Madame Pompadour bedroom. So I went for the simplest. There was a sūq [i.e. market] called Doukarat, very famous in Fez, a huge sūq behind the Majestic restaurant. It was wonderful because all the Moroccan families were selling their goods on the street. And I went there every Sunday morning, by wind, by snow. I started to make my house there. I should pay tribute to this sūq somewhere in the house because I bought a lot of things there." Kate, an American guest house owner, favoured the "couple of things that I though were very important: sheets and towels. If somebody stays here, what is really important? A clean bathroom, nice sheets and towels. Those things need to be high quality. So I spent my money on that. And then, very simple furniture. And then, as I started earning money, I went back to all the suites 'Ok, that's crap' and I replaced them with something good." Jawad often told me about what he would have bought (an aquarium, a fountain with colourful lights), had he had the money. Owners of tourist accommodations mentioned two important guidelines, namely the expectations of guests and the rules and charters. Owners generally translated the wishes and expectations of guests in a game between tradition and comfort. They aimed to propose a unique moment in a charming place far from daily Western routines. In Ziyarates houses, comfort is minimal, with for instance no private television and no air conditioning. Guest house owners have different ideas of what guests expect. "We are trying to present a typical Moroccan home to the guests. What I think becomes increasingly the desire of the guests, is to not stay in a hotel like any
137 other in the world. They want to come and live in the medina. They want to live in a house like the other people would, typical to this city" claimed Emma, an Australian tourist accommodation owner. Foreign guest house owners put to the fore their respect of the traditional and authentic aspects of the house. For example, they hid air conditioners behind a mucharabieh (i.e. lattice wood) , they avoided having a television in each bedroom and they used obsolete objects – stamp for the bread – or non decorative objects – clothes, jars – to decorate the house. Comfort is materially concealed to satisfy the exotic wishes of the guests. As for Moroccan owners, they installed televisions and whirlpools in bedrooms and they first aimed to answer the guests’ expectation of comfort. This difference led some foreign owners to declare that, following Ruth, "maybe Moroccans know a bit more about old rituals, old food, how to present the tea in a Moroccan way. But these are things we also do in gaouriya [i.e. foreign] houses. We serve the tea, mint tea and not black tea. So we can learn this. But there is a difference in the furniture. Also, maybe in a European house, we are closer … we better know Western people expectations, let's say because we are Europeans or let's say Westerners. We are closer to what they wish." Charters constitute a second principle in tourist accommodations even if owners don’t want to respect them. The Ziyarates label involves having "a typically Moroccan decoration and furnishing" and furniture that "has to be Moroccan craft and art objects that make perpetual the traditional aspect of those houses." The charters also list the basic furnishing needed, such as the kind of beds, tables and sheets. As Khadija, a Ziyarates landlady, put it, "Ziyarates told us what to do. We needed bed and mattresses. We knew we had to furnish the house to welcome guests. […] It is not the same [furniture in our bedrooms]. In our bedrooms, it is only bed like this [i.e. Moroccan banquette], traditional bed. But tourists prefer a modern bed." Abdelhay often underlined that Ziyarates follows the international tourism norms to welcome tourists in proper conditions. The Guest house Charter requires having a "Moroccan salon," a "typical Moroccan decoration," a "traditional" furnishing. When I asked Nora, a British guest house owner, how she decided to furnish the house, she answered it was "pretty simple. One of the rules for having a guest house is to have a Moroccan salon and to have certain types of furniture, like the banquet. And when the authorities came to test out the house, they tested the mattresses and saw what quality they were, and they wanted to see that you had a traditional table, and the type of material that we used. [...] The beds have to be of a certain length and a certain width. But at the same time, we wanted to keep the rooms quite simple, and basically we didn't want to go really elaborate. […] We put some carpets on the wall and cushions. And on the terrace, we tried making it quite traditional with red and green wall."
138 The blurry terms used in the charter – "traditional" furnishing, "Moroccan" salon – allow various interpretations of these terms and conflicts occur between owners and members of institutions in charge of the charter. When controlling a guest house, members of the practice permit commission check the furniture related to a guest house – television, a board specifying the guest house name and category, a dressing table and a luggage rack in every bedroom –, the staff – number members, the traditional cloth worn by the staff, separated rooms for masculine and feminine staff members –, security – second staircase, fire extinguishers and detectors, emergency lights – and health – cleanliness, separated areas in the kitchen to prepare meat, fish and vegetables. Owners agree on the fact that members of the commission strictly implement health and security rules but they do not agree with comments related to decoration. "It is personal. But I think we may wonder about materials used for the restoration works. It is more relevant according to me. Because it is a listed heritage site. But a sofa, in silk or synthetic... For me, it is not important" (Steve, American tourist accommodation owner). Owners, generally foreigners, accused the Guest house Charter of being too close to five star hotel standards, which result in an impossibility to conform to it. They also criticised members of the commission for imposing the traditional Fassi style of furnishing instead of promoting the eclecticism of styles. Foreign owners showed eloquence when talking about the lack of skills of commission members in terms of architecture and heritage. Amélie said that "members of the commission are not experts. They have never travelled. They don't know what a guest house in Europe is." Helen, the British manager of a renting agency, remembered when members of the Commission came to control the house of one of her friends. They looked at the mosaic on the floor in the courtyard and asked the friend to change it because it was too old, while oldness was precisely what the friend wanted to preserve and made the worth of the house. Finally, foreign owners accused members of the commission of blocking the practice permit process in order to get money from tourist accommodation owners and from powerful owners. As Michel, a French resident, thought, powerful guest house owners – that is to say Moroccan owner of huge and luxury guest houses – saw their share of the cake diminishing, and they established norms impossible to satisfy in order to limit competition. After economic incentives and tourist accommodation guidelines, informants insisted on their personality. A Moroccan couple owning a private house only brought items close to their heart from their flat in the New City. "Because the decoration, it is you, your person, your personality. It is a way for others to know you and discover you." Same for Michel, whose house in a Merinid style "is very sober, very monastic. But I really feel good there. In fact, the house is just like me." In Ziyarates home stays, Laïla Skalli, the "mother" of the programme, insisted on personal decoration
139 because "the tourist does not go in a Ziyarates house. He goes to the Ouazzani family or the Mezzour family." Informants also followed their personal pleasure and style. Antoine, an art aficionado, wanted the patio doors to look like tapestry. "I tried to create a harmony and to gather patterns two by two and four by four. Those patterns in fact, you find them in every original painting of the house." As far as she was concerned, Ruth said that she furnished the house according to her style, which, by chance, matched with the Moroccan style. "When I lived elsewhere [i.e. in Switzerland], I already had cushions on the ground, lanterns... So it is not a foreign style for me." The delight informants presented as an influence in their way of furnishing can favour or disfavour preservation. Benoit, a French guest house owner, "did what I wanted: little wood, no zelij [i.e. mosaic] , doors in metal and glass, grey and white walls. I do not give a damn about bringing it back to its initial state." Other informants associated personal incentives and functional guidelines. Luminosity constitutes a striking example of this link. Amélie and her husband, a couple owning a guest house and a private house, removed all the wooden shutters around the patio of their private house. "In fact, before we arrived, plain wood shutters darkened the first floor. And when we arrived, we found it a bit sad, wonderful but sad. So, we decided to remove all the wooden shutters and to replace them by bay windows." When I visited his house, Antoine insisted on the luminosity of his house in comparison to others. "I live in this house because it is luminous while it is a dār . A dār is a traditional house and it is usually dark. But there is luminosity in this house. The architecture is such that columns bring light." He also advised me to come back in the evening when artificial lighting changes the look and appreciation one can have on the house during daytime. In this spirit, he particularly thought the lighting, both the place of the bulbs and the wall lights in order "to see in the house and for the house to be seen." Functionality is another principle. Benoit made the choice of iron instead of wood for the shutters and doors because "wood is never really dry, it moves and swells, so that you need to plane it off. And at other times of the year, what you planed is missing. I didn't want windows that move, so I made windows in iron. And also, people here are unable to make wood framework under 7 cm wide. And when you have 7 cm window frameworks, you do not have windows anymore, you have light slits." Rabia, a Moroccan inhabitant, bought a table with four seats for her children to study in a proper position and not curled up above a low round table. Functionality often relates to very pragmatic concerns, such as security. Moroccans replaced their wood entrance door for a stronger metal one. Michel, a French resident, also set metal shutters and door on the rooftop after a robbery. Christina, an American resident, adopted a "very movable,
140 nomadic" furnishing. "I have a lot of these [i.e. wood frames] for the bed and the sofa in the salon. I use them a lot and I move them around all the time. So everything I have can be moved. And it is very minimal. I keep it nomadic in that way. Everything is movable." Frederica, a Spanish resident rented a room for one year in the medina. "I follow pragmatic and utilitarian criteria. I work at home, so I have to put a desk in the room. I need a lamp too. And then, there are some souvenirs, such as a piece of wood I brought from Spain. And a mirror my boyfriend offered me." Moroccan inhabitants also told they furnished and decorated the house according to their memories. Many inherited furniture from the family or received it as wedding gifts. Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner and former antique dealer, declared that he "put only traditional touches, traditional crochet curtains, and old Fassi brocade in silk, traditional carpets, furniture we always had in the familial house. I wanted to see what I had during my childhood in this traditional house." Omar moved from the medina to a flat in the New City in 2011. He declared that "for sure, a part of culture always follows you. For instance, the fraj , the traditional mattress, belongs to the innate culture of an individual. He grew up with it. Then, there is what has been acquired. The same individual has seen a loft on television; he saw the way people loll in a sofa in front of the TV with something to drink. So, he learnt one can do that. And in most flats, inhabitants mix both: they have a traditional part, with the fraj , and a more modern part with sofa, table and LCD television. It is rare to enter into a flat and to see it is 100% loft or 100% traditional." Foreigners also furnished and decorated the house with items remembering where they come from and their past. Benoit decided to continue what he knew as a child in France. Three months before the opening of his guest house, he already had a stock of pieces of furniture – sofa and seats brought from France –, dishes – set of floral plates of different colours bought on e bay – and sheets – thick linen sheet as "our grandmothers had" because they are "soft" to touch also bought on e bay. On the other hand, foreigners were eager to reflect Morocco, to "moroccanise" the house through furnishing. Evelyne, a French guest house owner, wanted "a ryad that looks like nowadays Morocco. I would say Morocco trying to move, but with a heavy tradition. So, I wanted this modern side. I bought some Layali sofas, those in front of the chimney. But I have the Moroccan salon in front of the Layali sofas." Jean Pierre and his wife, a French couple owning a guest house, said that they "wanted to combine the Moroccan style with what we like, because it is our house, we live here every day of the year. And the Moroccan style is in general very, very, very ornate. We don't like it. When you have gilt everywhere, velour everywhere, we don't like. So, we made according to our taste, even the colours of zelij [i.e. mosaic]. We kept the blue one, but otherwise, we have chosen modern colours, pastel and so on." Chinage (i.e. bargain hunt) in second hand markets constitutes a pastime for foreigners and
141 rich Moroccans. According to François, a French tourist accommodation owner, "there is a fashion aspect. In France, people retrieve things for about 15 years. It is the trend. You entered into more houses owned by foreigners than us. And in these houses, you find grosso modo [i.e. more or less] the same decoration because people like going to bargain hunt old things. Well, people buy different things but there is this same trend to bargain hunt, to retrieve things. It is good form, what is expected of the good French class. […] It was the same when in the 1970s in France, the Swiss and the Dutch came in the South to retrieve breadboxes and furrier machines to hang them on the wall. Our grandmothers wanted to get rid of these things and the Dutch made wonderful decoration out of them. And we just imitate this. […] I think that taking those things from the past is a fashion. However, you know that it is not definitely saved, because you will die. But look at this Jewish cupboard there. It was dedicated to destruction. But I had some pleasure to make it alive again, that is to say 'So, it is not lost, it is here.'" Informants also said they took inspiration from magazines, television, websites or houses they visited. Omar mentioned the modern salons he saw in TV series. When I went to her house in the New City, Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, welcomed me with a pile of picture printed from the Internet and she took inspiration from when she furnished her house. On the other hand, visiting each other or looking at how others furnish raise a willingness of distinction. Informants asserted that they "tried to be original," and particularly criticised kaftan (i.e. traditional clothes) and carpets hung up on the walls. "A kaftan , there is a lot of kaftan , this is why I don't have any here" or " that's probably why I don't have any carpet, they are very common." Finally, the house may also influence the furnishing and decoration. On the one hand, some informants started from the name of their house or a room or a special architectural feature to furnish it, following the idea of a thematic furnishing. On the other hand, the architectural layout and decoration prevent from decorating. Loïc didn’t want the furnishing to take precedence over the architectural decoration, "the magnificence of the natural decoration of the house." Some foreigners didn’t know how to match pieces of furniture with the architectural decoration. Christina, an American resident, given the "clash" resulting from "many patterns" with "the mosaic on the walls, then they print on cushions, and on carpets, and on pillows," decided to have very simple furniture. Abdelaziz, a Morocco French guest house owner, whose house was built in the 1930s, didn’t hesitate too much. "We are not talking about a 400 year old house. The style is really marked Art Deco. So for us, it was obvious. It was uncluttered lines, and geometry." Furniture is uncluttered, but "with a Moroccan touch that reminds the Moroccan craft." For instance, the sofa are in alkantara, of a square shape and very simple, but with a Fassi embroidery on the back.
142 4.3.3. Judgement and taste
Instead of looking at what is beneath and beyond furniture, I’m looking at the judgements informants expressed when talking about furniture, at the distinction drawn between groups and at criteria supporting these judgements. Informants indeed judged each other’s furnishing and decoration. This evaluative judgement was mainly conceded in terms of taste. However, informants met difficulties to put their judgement into words. When I asked Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, to develop the term "correct" she used to describe a picture, she answered she didn’t "know. It is as when you see somebody pretty and somebody ugly. You know it but cannot always explain it." Moreover, informants barely judged an entire house as they hardly gave only one verdict. One may like the floor but not the furniture, or the furniture but not the walls.
4.3.3.1. Criteria of taste
A first criterion is originality. Gigi described the house of Emma as "not conventional. You can see she made something different." The conventional is found in every house and consists in blue mosaic, table in mosaic, carpets and kaftan (i.e. traditional clothe) on the wall, "like everywhere else." Helen, the British manager of a renting agency, declared to be "really choosy [in the guest houses of her tourism agency]. After a while, all the houses tend to look the same, to me [...] Same thing, same zelij [i.e. mosaic], same Moroccan lamp, same this, same that. It is like Moroccan food, you know. It is always a tajine . It is always a couscous. Often, there is no imagination." Informants used idioms such as the soul and the personality of the house, the personal touch of the inhabitant, and the overly humanistic style, to talk about originality. A German guest house owner was the first to implement thematically decorated rooms, and more particularly to hang up clothes on the wall. Frederica, a Spanish resident, linked decoration with the ability of inhabitants not to reproduce cliché images. "It [i.e. decoration] should be personal, but not personal as you find it in every shop. […] I think there are clichés linked with what you can find in Hanout [i.e. shop]. And it is always the same lamps in skin, the same zelij [i.e. mosaic], the same old objects. And people often reproduce this style. I don't want to say it is unpleasant. I like some of these objects. For instance, I also bought a lamp in camel skin." Informants did not particularly dislike the conventional but they did not favour it. Amélie said about conventional rooms that they have "no interest. It is flat, there is no relief. It is well composed, but there is no soul," that is to say "when something has a personal touch."
143 Secondly, a house has to be typical. Anybody should guess that the house is located in Morocco. As Loïc said about one picture I showed him (picture 6 in the appendix p.319), "we are not sure it is Morocco, because the decoration is not typical. There is nothing... We can guess because the style in a way, this kind of bedspread, those kinds of low tables in wood. When we know Morocco a bit, we can guess." Continuity with ancestral practices, values and objects provide the house with typicality. The "good old days," or the idealised past, constitute a second factor in the construction, and recognition, of a house as typical. The house is representative of a past way of life different from the present day one. Harmony, the absence of any "wrong note" in Amélie’s terms, is a third criterion of taste. "It is uncluttered but harmonious. It is uncluttered but it fits together. Furniture matches with the ground and with the lanterns" (Ruth). Harmony appears in the congruence between the house and the place. Lotfi, a Moroccan living in the New City, likes "Art Deco, but it doesn't match with medina houses. It breaks the typical Moroccan aspect." Within the house, harmony relies on patterns. Ruth showed me a mosaic pattern with four different colours on each side of the salon entrance. "I really don't like it. When you have beautiful carpets, it never matches." More than patterns, colours are discriminating in terms of harmony. According to Omar, "taste in the choice of fabrics lies in the colours. Everybody likes what he likes. So, strictly speaking of colours, I cannot say it is good or bad taste. For instance, I like dark colours but some prefer light colours. I think bad taste emerges with regards to harmony. If colours are not harmonious, it is bad taste. But the fact I have only black is not a bad taste. It is my taste. But if I do not harmonise, if I mix yellow with blue and purple curtains, this is bad taste." Harmony between colours results in something "soft." On the contrary, a room or a house without colours is "cold." Also, "you can easily play with furniture while following an idea of Moroccan traditions and keeping the harmony between colours," declared Gigi. Finally, beauty relates to harmony. If beauty means simplicity to many foreigners, some Moroccans prefer opulence. Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, declared that her taste "is a bit refined, a bit luxurious. In a beautiful house, there are 12, 10, 8, or 4 columns in the patio. And balconies with mucharabieh [i.e. lattice wood]. And naqsh [i.e. painting] on the wood or on the plaster. And zelij [i.e. mosaic]." In Gigi’s view, "you can just put one beautiful piece of furniture. And this piece would be beautiful everywhere. If you have a Syrian piece of furniture, it is not Moroccan. You know, those beautiful inlay tables, I find them wonderful." If informants talked in terms of beauty, they also judged ugliness. Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, exclaimed in front of a picture (picture 20 in the appendix p. 321) that the owners "have bashed the pillars up. I don't know them but if you want my opinion frankly, without hypocrisy, it is ugly." Ugliness there meant a difference from the
144 conventional way of furnishing.
4.3.3.2. Taste and distinction
Bourdieu (1984) has already investigated the relation between taste, distinction and the social status of individuals. More recently, in a collective book dedicated to "the taste of beautiful things" and the everyday aesthetic judgment, Nahoum Grappe and Vincent (2004) investigate how the aesthetic statement and the aesthetic look participate to the definition of relationships between people. According to them, the aesthetic statement supports the qualification, identification and organisation of people and objects into a hierarchy. Miller and Clarke (1999) also define taste as a practice and as a social construction involving social relations. When one evokes a choice, he/she evokes at the same time a relation with somebody else. When judging in terms of taste, informants allocated "good taste" or "bad taste" awards to other inhabitants. In doing so, they draw boundaries between those who have taste and those who haven’t, those who know the criteria and those who do not. In the following, I review how Moroccans and foreigners distinguish themselves on the basis of taste.
Pic. 27. Table in mosaic in a tourist accommodation. Credit: M. Istasse
Moroccans were sceptical toward several foreigners’ ways of decorating and furnishing. For instance, they qualified of "odd decoration" the presence of African objects. Moroccans also discussed the invention of new pieces of furniture, such as tables in mosaic and wrought iron. Some saw them as non Moroccan because Moroccans don’t have the habit of using tables with seats to
145 eat. Tables in mosaic are then a Western invention inspired by Moroccan tradition. Others, such as Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, claimed that these tables are Moroccan. "It comes from Fez, from Morocco. But it is quite new. It slowly becomes traditional. It is a style we do not put in the patio. It remains typical of rooftops and gardens." Kaftan (i.e. traditional clothe), and more generally former functional objects used as decoration, provokes criticisms among Moroccans. On the one hand, according to them, one has to use objects according to their first purpose. Abdelhay said not to "use a door for what it is not: a table." According to Omar, "it is stupid to hang up a kaftan on the wall. Why exhibit it? It is a cloth worn during celebrations. There are other things we hang on the wall, such as carpets. But it is rather a Berber tradition. It comes from the South. If I remember well, there were mirrors at home." As Ziyarates landlady Amal put it, foreigners consider the kaftan as a decoration while Moroccans use it as a cloth. Hamid, a shopkeeper, told me that members of a family may keep a very old kaftan in a chest and look at it from time to time during family meetings. He continued, commenting on jars: "Jars? They [i.e. foreigners] took them and made them decoration or sinks. It is a European habit. It is not a Moroccan habit. It is not an Islamic habit. In Morocco, we have lanterns, ceiling lights, carved wood, mosaic, mattresses, and curtains to decorate a house."
Pic. 28. Piece of cloth framed and hanging on the wall in a tourist accommodation. Credit: M. Istasse.
Display rests at the core of this decoration with former functional objects. Omar declared that "Moroccans would never, even in 1000 years, put jars for l'khlia [i.e. dry meat] in a bedroom. We put it in the cellar. Would you put something from the cellar into your bedroom? […] But they [i.e. tourists] don't know what it is. They don't know it serves to preserve meat. To them, it is a piece of art. This is not a jar as they know. So, we need to exhibit jars: I'm not going to put them in the cellar and bring people down to the cellar to show them." He described tourist accommodations, and guest houses in particular, as "a kind of museum, a small museum. They [i.e. owners] try to
146 exhibit a maximum of cultural items in a place for people to see it without moving a lot. They exhibit jars and kaftan . Exhibiting is the word. But gathering Moroccan objects in a bedroom, for people to see them, doesn’t guarantee people will understand the culture." Amélie and her husband also aimed to display through the decoration and furnishing of their two houses. "I think we show objects in their own environment. There is a very local mix. It is quite compact. There is perhaps a bit too many objects but everything is displayed simply." These criticisms about objects used as pieces of furniture and decoration raise an issue about the value and functionality given to objects. Rachik (1997), taking the salon and clothes as examples, shows that in Morocco, the beldi (i.e. traditional, from the country) doesn’t participate actively to the daily life but is limited to ceremonial and ritual events. Displayed in specific circumstances, the beldi serves as a separation from daily life. On a daily basis, Moroccans use the rumi (i.e. modern, Western) as utilitarian objects. Within this dichotomy, the beldi evokes the ritual, affective, symbolic due to its aesthetic side and the rumi is the functional side. Without going as far as associating the beldi with the ritual and the rumi with the functional, both the functional and the affective aspects of objects influence their use as decoration. Hamza, a Moroccan guest house owner, favoured hanging up kaftan on the wall. "I also like to hang it up in a frame. It gives it more value. If you go in Dar Dmana, you can see kaftan in frames and even embroidered napkins. It is wonderful." According to Mohammed, a Ziyarates host, if people hang kaftan on the wall "it means people are interested in their Moroccan tradition." But he didn't want a kaftan in his bedroom. "I prefer it in a museum." A third issue concerns taste as an endogenous knowledge and skill. Abdelhay did not agree with furnishing a house in a Western way, because afterwards "you feel like being in Europe in the house". According to him, Fassi can recognise furniture "that is at its place." The underlining idea is that one has to be immersed in Moroccan culture to decorate in a Moroccan way, "one has to be from here to know." Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, declared that she could "recognise the Western taste when someone wants to furnish in a Moroccan way and misses it a bit. I can feel it. […] It doesn't mean a total failure. But simply, one can feel it." For instance, "sometimes, they [i.e. foreigners] take a Berber blanket and use it as a bedspread. They think that it is traditional. It could be, but we do not use it in the Moroccan taste." Rather than specific criteria, taste relates to affects according to Diya who repeated that she "can feel it." Omar further developed the skill aspect of taste. According to him, Moroccans do not decorate the walls because "firstly, pictures are forbidden by Islam, we don't have the right to have pictures. It is not said as such but Islam stipulates that pictures are an imitation of Allah's work, so it is forbidden." Secondly, he asserted that in order to develop taste, "you need a lot of things, and you
147 need to choose among these things. We cannot have taste or not to have taste in our culture if we do not have many decorative objects. Take a square, empty room. I give each of you and a friend three objects to decorate it. Maybe the display will not be the same, but the decoration will be nearly similar. That's why, in traditional houses, the decoration is the same but with different displays, because there is no wide choice of objects to decorate. When you have hundreds of objects and that you have to choose among them, then we speak of taste. If you choose the ugliest ones and those very far from each other in terms of style, you have no taste […] So, as we didn't have objects to decorate, we didn't learn how to do so. And now, they [i.e. Moroccans] put as many objects as possible, and they call it decoration. From both the practical and religious sides, we had no decoration. So we cannot decorate." Taste is not a matter of identity, but of experience and skill, as Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, put it. "There is no nationality to bungle one's house. It is not a matter of taste, but of experience." Finally, foreign ways of furnishing raise the issue of Orientalism. 92 Talal, a Moroccan guest
92 Beyond Orientalism, Moroccans described the presence of foreigners as an invasion, a colonisation. On their side, Moroccan informants at first sight didn’t care about the presence of foreigners and mentioned the positive aspects of such a presence. Foreigners bring money, boost employment, and restore houses and streets. However, after a while though (translated in methodological and epistemological terms as "after several discussions with the same informants and due to the fact that I was myself a foreigner living there but who didn't own a house"), they started criticising foreigners. Foreigners were mainly accused of causing the rise in prices in the property market. For instance, Amal, a Moroccan home stay landlady, wanted to sell her house to foreigners only, for they would pay a better price. More generally, Moroccans complained that houses have become too expensive. When I asked Hassan, an employee at the Inspection of Historical Monuments, why he didn't buy a house in the medina, he replied that he "cannot afford one, seriously. I cannot afford this privilege, given real estate prices. […] Even if I wanted to buy a small house, as a civil servant with a modest salary, I couldn’t." Many Moroccans saw the presence of foreigners as a kind of physical colonisation. They widely shared the idea that "[t]he French left by the door and came back through the window." For instance, as Rachid, a Moroccan architect, put it, foreigners behave according to their own rules. "Some [i.e. foreigners] come with the idea of changing the medina. It is what I often unfortunately call 'Tintin in the black gold country.' They haven't understood anything. The guys who build crenellations on the wall didn't wonder if there is any house in the medina with crenellations. It is sad, it is sad. It gets on my nerves. When you arrive in the medina, the first thing you do is to open your eyes and try to understand." This "foreign invasion" instigates a feeling of dispossession and economic colonisation among the Moroccans inhabitants. Many assumed that foreigners had a lot of money. They also feared foreigners would outnumber Moroccans in the medina, would privatise streets – as they already have supposedly done – with gates and guards at the entrance. I have often heard sentences such as "Moroccans will soon have to have a passport to enter into the medina" or "foreigners take what belongs to us, houses, money, medina, country." According to one famous rumour, foreigners do not have the right to buy a house without a Moroccan business partner. Finally, the colonisation is also political, because the arrival of foreigners relates to a supposed Western conspiracy to take the control of Morocco. Some Moroccans thought that foreign governments sent citizens to the medina to buy houses and inform them on Fez. Many foreign residents are assumed to be spies. David, the American Language Institute director, is a common target, as were two Americans who opened a real estate agency, Fez Properties, which was said to be a façade to evangelise the city. The fact that foreigners mainly stayed among themselves fuels the conspiracy theory discourse. According to Lotfi, a Moroccan living in the New City, "[w]hen you take a look at the integration of foreigners in Fez, you do not see a lot of integration with the Moroccan population. Except when foreigners are looking for a maid or somebody that does everything for a few dirham and they do not have to declare [them to the tax authorities]. So, if you want, we are far from having integration between Moroccans and foreigners. As proof of this: you arrived about two years ago, right? When you are with the French community, do you see a lot of Moroccans with them? No, one or two at a pinch." Saigh Bousta (2004) deepens the investigation of Moroccan inhabitants' discourses about foreigners. Moroccans do not appreciate the clothing of some tourists, their influence on youth, and their link with sexual tourism. However, they describe their daily relations with foreign neighbours as generally friendly and good. Kurzac Souali (2006, 2007) for
148 house owner working at the Regional Council of Tourism, listed some backbones of Moroccan furniture, such as the tea tray, tea glasses. The way some foreigners had furnished their house sometimes shocked him. "An old big wood bowl with glass above to make it a table, or tables with zelij [i.e. mosaic] on the top, we wouldn't do that. It is done in a Moroccan way but with a European taste, according to the idea Europeans have of Morocco." Some foreigners, like Amélie, are aware of the particular image they offer to tourists. "When you decide to open guest house, obviously, you are on the edge of the local life. We only give an image. And if your team is friendly and Moroccan, it is already makes a big difference, because the team is in direct relation with the clients."
Foreigners also criticised the Moroccan style in terms of taste. They evaluated Moroccan interiors as "kitsch" or overly decorated. In foreigners’ eyes, the Moroccan style mainly represents an example of bad taste. To them, a house in good taste is "cosy," "simple" and "sober." Ruth "wanted to keep the Moroccan style but without this opulence in colours and forms characteristic of the Moroccan style. My colours are simple. Orange and purple. I didn’t mix 5 colours and three patterns." In addition to disliking Moroccan interiors, foreigners accused Moroccans of having no taste. Some informants, including Moroccan elites, thought that Moroccans need advice. Others tried to explain this lack of taste because of the architectural decoration of houses. According to Abderahim, a Moroccan restaurant manager, Moroccans spent a lot of money in the architectural decoration because they spent most of their time – and even free time – in their house, and because of the daret (i.e. practices of families and neighbours to visit each other) in the context of which everybody has to show as wonderful a house as possible.
Aside from their differences, foreigners and Moroccans met on one point. More often than not, informants concluded that taste is relative. Others simply have "another taste" and "everybody has its own style." I asked Steve, an American tourist accommodation owner, to give me his opinion about the pictures. After he had spread them out on the table to have a general overview, he answered that what I asked him "was a bit tricky. These are very different places. Yes... Because taste is always very specific, it is very personal the decoration […] In my opinion, there are houses and there is the decoration. Decoration is very individual. Everybody has his taste, and everybody finds the decoration he likes. Some prefer the 1001 nights with a lot of fabrics. And it may be
her part points out general changes due to the presence of foreigners: a different sociability in the street, an evolution in the property market as houses and plots are growing more expensive, a change in the social composition of the area as some Moroccans inhabitants have incentive to leave the medina due to pressure by investors and the attraction of high selling prices. The latter leads Kurzac Souali (2006: 343) to speak of "socio spatial and residential segregation."
149 excessive for someone else." However, according to Philippe, a French art historian, "a universal good taste doesn't exist, but well, there are things to avoid." Steve continued after he mentioned the relativity of tastes. "If one wants to decorate his 17 th or 18 th century house in a modernist way, I don't understand the purpose of having a Fassi house." These assertions are close to those of Hennion (1993), who defines taste as a creative action resulting in the production of skilled and reflexive "tasters." Taste is a performance that perpetually tests four basic elements, namely a body that tastes and feels, an object to taste, a collective to center the taste by shared styles and criteria, and devices to stabilise the object. It doesn't mean that everybody is equally good at tasting or that every object is tasted equally or gives equal taste. Taste has to be exercised and learnt. Some people have more taste – are more able to furnish and decorate properly or are more able to judge of furnishing and decoration – because they are trained to do so – they often perform, they know which words and criteria to use. In other words, they are more familiar with the body, object, collective and devices involved in taste. In that view, Moroccan taste and Western taste differ because they are not framed by the same collectives and do not give rise to the same creative actions.
In this chapter, I overviewed the ways people talk about furniture and decoration. These discourses constitute a basis for distinction. Fez is supposed to have its own style, the Arab Andalus style. Foreigners and Moroccans disagree on the quantity of ornaments. Healthy and poor Moroccans differ on the quality of the decoration. Foreign and Moroccan guest house owners have different views on how to satisfy their clients in terms of furniture and decoration. I also focused on taste. Informants defined taste as a skill to furnish a house properly. As an ability of people, taste oscillates between an innate skill – one has to be from Morocco, from the country, to know how to furnish and decorate properly – and a learnt skill – with some practice, experience and feeling, one can learn how to furnish and decorate properly. Foreigners denied taste skills to Moroccans, judging their interiors as "kitsch," "too much" and "not harmonious." In this context, "kitsch" is a mark of distinction between foreigners and Moroccans. Rather than "kitsch", Salamandra (2004) investigates how authenticity in Old Damascus reveals this distinction between foreigners and locals. Taste is also an award judged through criteria, such as harmony or typicality. However, the definition of a typical house remains blurry, as underlined by Amiotte Suchet and Floux (2002) in their investigation of the museification of a regional French house. To them, a typical house results from a construction and doesn't match with any architectural reality. It doesn't prevent people to spot the architectural invariants characterising a "typical house" – blue and white mosaic long and
150 narrow rooms, or carved plaster in the case of Fez. If Moroccans have no taste according to foreign criteria of furnishing, foreigners commit errors in furnishing their house by displaying formerly used objects. The images of "maroccanity" and the trend to "moroccanise" among foreigners led to some Moroccans to criticise them. In foreign owned guest houses, the fittings and amenities are supposed to satisfy tourists. Chebbak (2004) discusses the guest house as an Orientalist avatar symptomatic of the Western post modernity, of a period fascinated by leisure, luxury and exoticism. This symptom threatens the house as a place to live and denies the "secular housing and being" (Chebbak, id.: 29, my translation). The West is clearly distinct from Morocco, as Said (1978) points out in his definitions of Orientalism. In his view, the word has three meanings, namely a science studying the Orient, a thought based on an ontological difference between the West and the East, and a Western style of domination and authority. In the case of furnishing and decorating, Orientalism refers mainly to the second meaning, as both Moroccan and foreigner residents argued they were different in their tastes. As a skill or as a judgment, taste is not specific to anybody or any group, be it Moroccans, foreigners or members of the commission. However, each group uses it as a way of distinction. In an article dedicated to furnishing houses in the French Landes, Guedez (2004: 49, my translation) claimed that " there exist non scholarly systems of representation of beauty and of all social actors can put into words an aesthetic emotion signified as well by consensual judgments (‘This is to my taste/this is not to my taste,’ ‘I like this/I don’t like this’) as by value judgment of taste (‘this is beautiful’), where submission to collective norms is intertwined with collective norms and choices claimed as singular. "
151 4.4. Intimacy, hospitality and tradition in tourist accommodations
As I mentioned in the introduction, tourist development took place in Fez in the late 1990s and still continues in the early 2010s. Fettah underlined that the medina should benefit from "all the efforts and all the love from Morocco." It nonetheless remains "a neglected city, the ghetto, the milk cow of Morocco" because "until the early 2000s, a political desire blocked the city. All the main projects were diverted from the medina and carried into the New City or other cities." According to Fettah, tourism is the only solution to bring effective changes in the medina and to make it alive. In this chapter, I focus on tourist accommodations, that is to say guest houses, locations de meublé and Ziyarates home stays. I review the notions of intimacy, hospitality and tradition, because tourist accommodations are places in which these notions are the most problematic. According to the literature, houses in Fez are supposed to protect the intimacy of the family and women. However, more than principles, intimacy and privacy are what tourist accommodation owners 93 fight for in very practical ways. Also, hospitality is at the core of the relation between hosts and guests as a human relation and as a euphemism hiding the economic side of this relation. Finally, tourist accommodations challenge the notion of tradition by presenting their own negotiation with traditions and (re)presentations of the past. But first of all, I present why foreigners and Moroccans decide to open a tourist accommodation.
4.4.1. Why open a tourist accommodation
In Ziyarates home stays, owners usually decided to welcome guests because they had a huge house that is too expensive to maintain. They also knew that more and more tourists are looking for a cheap and unusual accommodation. In 2007, Amal started welcoming guests illegally. Her husband usually went – and still goes – to a café. One day, Spanish tourists came to asking for an accommodation, as hotels were complete. The waiter asked the husband to accommodate them, as he knew there were extra bedrooms in Amal’s house. In the following month, the waiter regularly sent tourists to their house. After a while, Amal tried to have information to welcome tourists legally. She heard about Ziyarates and participated to the home stay programme. Abdelhay and his family – his mother and two nieces – were thinking of selling their house to move in the New City when they heard about the Ziyarates project. "It was an opportunity to receive people and to
93 I either use the words "owner" or "host" to refer to the people welcoming in their house, and "tourist" or "guest" to refer to those welcomed – while owners mainly used the terms "tourist" or "client."
152 participate directly to the tourism activity." Instead of selling their too large house, they "found a new use to our ryad. We would have never thought of our house to welcome tourists from Europe." As they "liked the project," they "stayed at home. Now, even if anybody pays me a high price for the house, I do not move," declared the mother. Guest house owners gave others explanations. Some foreigners opened a tourist accommodation because the construction works cost too much and they wanted the house to be profitable. Benoit wanted a private house. After all the money spent in the works, he decided to open a guest house. Other foreigners came to Fez with the aim of opening a business, as Kate did. "Yeh, I came down here looking for houses to sit my business plan. I had a business plan, and I looked at the market in Fez. There were only ten ryads here when I started looking. Mabrouka had just opened, there were Louna, Ghalia, Maison Bleue, Ryad Arabesque, and a few others. But there was nothing here [in her neighbourhood]. And all the rooms were like 200 euro a night. I wanted to open a place where people like me could afford to spend a night. Maybe 100 or 150 euro for a really nice place. So I knew what size I needed, and I knew roughly what to charge per room, and I estimated all my fences, which I was totally wrong about but… I was a banker so I did my projections, my cash blow, and I came to statically looking for the house that would work with that." Sometimes, foreign residents took their time before opening a tourist accommodation. They came to Fez several times, bought a house and then made into a tourist accommodation. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, explained that "because I had chosen to live here, I decided to have an activity. Such a house is wonderful, but if you do not meet people, if you do not have a minimal activity, you get depressed." On the other hand, Jean Marc underlined that "contrary to France, a guest house here is a real economic activity. Those who think it is a small incidental job, where you take pleasure in receiving people from time to time, are wrong. From the morning until the evening, we are on the go." Several foreigners insisted on – and sometimes complained about – the guest house's taking monopoly of their time. Guy and his wife regretted they did not have a lot of free time for their children. Ruth complained about the routine, as she did the same things every day, that is to say welcoming guests, going shopping or to an administration, answering emails. Moroccan guest house owners for their part have been involved in tourism activities for long, working as hotelkeepers or tourism guides. They bought a house in the medina or they used the familial house to extend their occupation. Youssef has worked in hotels all around Morocco before coming back to Fez and opening a restaurant – Dar Tajine – in his familial house. He decided to open a guest house in the late 1990s and he gave the management to his son Aziz, who went to Montreal for his hotel business training. Talal worked at the Jnan Palace – a five star hotel in Fez –
153 and he is member of the Regional Tourism Council. His son Driss started managing the familial guest house after he had finished his studies in hotel business. Abadi father worked at the Palais Jamaï – another five star hotel in Fez – and decided to open the first guest house in Fez, La Maison Bleue in 1999. His son, after his studies in tourism management, opened a second guest house and takes care of the two guest houses. He is also member of CRT. Most of the time, a tourist accommodation is a way for these Moroccan elites to come back to the medina and to be elites of their time.
4.4.2. Intimacy and privacy
As I've written above (cf. supra p. 86), scholars made the preservation of intimacy and privacy by architectural closure into a characteristic of Moroccan and North African houses. Tourist accommodations challenge this intimacy. On the one hand, the media open the house to the world. An official website 94 gathers the Ziyarates families and presents their house through descriptions and pictures. Few families have their own website 95 or a Facebook page.96 Guest house owners also have their own website 97 or a blog 98 for their promotion. The comments and pictures posted by tourists on TripAdvisor also give public images of houses. TV documentaries, such as Maisons du Sud/Maroc , Des Racines et des Ailes , or Uncharted territories, as well as magazines – Architecture du Maroc , Maisons et Jardins – and books – Maisons et Ryads du Maroc, Villas and Courtyard Houses of Morocco – dedicated several issues, articles, pages and pictures to tourist accommodations, and more generally houses, in Morocco. As a consequence, a new game between the closure and the opening of the house emerged. Described as traditionally closed to the external world and open to the interior, tourist accommodations are open to the exterior, as tourists stay in the house and as images of the house spread through media. At the same time, owners create places of intimacy in the house. On the other hand, welcoming guests for long stays in the house, that is to say neither visitors staying a few hours in the room dedicated to them nor members of the family staying for free during a few days, threatens the house’s intimacy. As Lynch and MacWhannell (2000) put it, receiving guests brings some money but the price to pay is a loss of privacy and of personal space. In Fez, some owners decided not to live in the house dedicated to tourists while others shared the house with the guests.
94 http://www.ziyaratesfes.com/ 95 http://www.maison laghzaoui.com/ 96 http://www.facebook.com/naima.azzouziidrssi 97 http://www.ryaddamiafes.com/index.php?lang=fr , http://www.ryadalbartal.com/ 98 http://ryadzitounafesrenovation.unblog.fr/ ; http://ryad9.blogspot.be/
154 When sharing the house, preserving intimacy and privacy is a matter of prime importance. According to Bernard (1998), inhabitants appropriate their house and feel at home through privacy and personalisation. Dwellers personalise, "mark" the house with furnishing and decoration – as I described in the preceding chapter. But owning, customising and marking the house does not suffice to appropriate it fully and to feel at home. Privacy is correlated to the control of space – who comes in and out – and to the possession of a place separate from the outside world – a nest in Bachelard’s terms. Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, felt at home in his guest house because "even if I'm not there, my heart and my soul are there. I spend 80% of my time there. I spend more time in this house than at home." Guy, a French tourist accommodation owner, felt at home "because it is mine, and because I experienced hell in this house. And I know everything in the house; I know how everything was made, the potential problems that may occur one day. I do not know it by heart, but pretty close to it." Moroccan owners hardly live in their guest house. Youssef lived with his family in his house when he used it as a restaurant, but he moved when he turned it into a tourist accommodation because of privacy and intimacy issues. Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, is an exception as she intended to live in her guest house – under construction at the time of my fieldwork. "It is impossible to live in a guest house with a family. I'm alone, it is different. […] I'm alone and I'm afraid of staying alone in the villa [in the New City]." Nora, a British lady, and her Moroccan husband lived in their guest house for practical reasons. "Yeah, we decided to live inside the ryad to keep control. We think that the first two or three years of business, it is important that we keep an eye on things. Also, some people arrive at twelve at night, and it costs to have a guardian here. And I have my office here, and I'm replying to e mails until about eleven at night. A secondary reason is that we haven't found anywhere to rent close by." Few foreign owners live in their guest house. Loïc, a French guest house owner, explained that "you cannot feel at home [in a guest house]. I'm at home, as I'm the owner. But at the same time, I'm not at home. For instance, it is not my kitchen. I'm always looking for the kitchenware and I have to ask where things are. You don't have to do so when you are at home. There is a perpetual gap, except in the private spaces. It is a bit as if I were always at the office." Loïc arrived in Fez in 2009. He slowly appropriated the house. He noticed he passed from a general view on the house to a much more detailed one. After a few months, he was able to notice details and small changes in the decoration. Also, he changed the name of some bedrooms because "it is not my story." Finally, he told me one morning he felt at home in his bedroom for the first time because he smelled his own smell. He had been living in the house for about 7 months. Similarly to Loïc, few owners really felt "at home" in their tourist accommodation because
155 they did not have their own space except their bedroom. Ruth didn't "consider the masriya [i.e. integrated flat] where I live, where I have all my personal stuff, as my home. My stuff is in a guest house in which I'm currently living. But the house is really a house for the guests. […] There are always people [in the house]. There is always staff. I cannot be noisy. You know, when I come back late in the evening, it is as if I was coming to my parents' house when I was young. I cannot make noise. […] I cannot receive any phone call or friends late in the evening because you can hear everything." In her view, feeling at home means "leaving very personal things around and not having to put them away all the time." As a consequence, foreigners living in their guest house and Moroccan families of the Ziyarates programme developed practices and devices to control their space. They established rules to control the access to their rooms. In a Ziyarates home stay, Amal told me about – and eventually showed me – the "hidden parts of the house." Guests don’t need to see the staircase leading to a junk room where the family stored food and stuff and kept the sheep for the ‘aïd el Kebir (i.e. Feast of the Sacrifice). Hidden doesn't mean forbidden – guests can have a look if they ask – but it is not showed during the first tour of the house. However, in the Ouazani family, there are forbidden rooms, as guests cannot access the first floor. "Upstairs, it is our home. Downstairs, it is Ziyarates." Limits and rules are important because "some tourists think they are above the law." For instance, they open every door, are noisy, help themselves in the fridge or move the furniture around. Also, owners carefully choose their guests. They refuse children and select guests after their mail – how they present themselves, what they are waiting for. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, preferred to "build up my clientele than to have a house full of tourists." Ruth decided to limit her relations with the guests. She didn’t eat with them and didn’t talk about personal stuff. She complained that guests sometimes asked too personal and private questions even before she started presenting the house. Also, they always asked the same questions – where do you come from, why are you alone here, why did you decide to live in Fez? She said she would record a tape with all the needed information and give it to the guests. Moving constitutes another solution to feel at home. Some foreigners first lived in their guest house and bought or rented a private place afterwards. Emma, an Australian tourist accommodation owner, noticed that "all of my friends, 3 and a half years later, all of them were crazy, saying 'We need somewhere else to live.' It is a question of intimacy and separation from work." Owners moved for several reasons. Many dedicated the entire house to the guests to have the five required bedrooms to be official. Other mentioned the preservation of their private and familial life. Amélie and her husband wanted to protect both their familial life and their business, for their two young boys needed their own place to play without disturbing the guests. They bought
156 a private house, not too far from the guest house. If they still had to work hard and barely saw their children, they had a more private familial life. Finally, as Kate explained, there is a matter of separation between work and home. "If you try to have a day off, you come downstairs to check your e mails, a guest will see you 'Oh, Kate, just a quick question!' And you can't say 'I'm not here, you don't see me'. So you answer their question. And then another guest will see you: 'Oh, while you're here, could you...' And then your all day goes, and you've no day off. […] One thing I learned running a guest house for 4 years, it stops feeling like your home, and it starts feeling like the place where you work. And it's a huge psychological difference." Since then, Kate has moved to a flat in the New City. Conversely, some owners mentioned they wanted the guests to appropriate their house. Marie, a French tourist accommodation owner, at first only received friends, but with time, her house has become "a small business." "At first, I thought it would make a strange feeling that people live in our house. But now, I see people taking over the house, and in fact, I like when they appropriate it." Rules and interior regulations one the one hand limit the freedom of guests, but they also create common references. For instance, during the shared meals, Fez becomes the starting topic of conversations and hosts and guests discover common interests. Also, guests develop a certain familiarity. They declare they come "back home" after a day in the medina. Some owners also wanted to provide guests with intimacy and privacy. In Benoit's house, "people won't eat together. That's why I need numerous and varied places, for people to move away from each other. […] People do not come in a guest house to meet other people and gather with them. This American story is over. People do not do this anymore. They come in a guest house because they come in a historic place, in a special place, in a wonderful place, where they are not surrounded by middle class French people." In Loïc's guest house, plants separate tables in the courtyard and on the rooftop, forming intimate corners.
4.4.3. Hospitality
According to Gravari Barbas (2005), inhabiting a house also means cohabiting, sharing values and activities with others inhabitants, or receiving free or paying guests. Several scholars (Saigh Bousta, 2004; Morice, 2006; Kurzac Souali, 2007) study this cohabitation in terms of conflicts between the commercial and residential functions of the house or between the permanent residents, the tourists and the neighbours living in and around the house. Chebbak (2004) defines hospitality in Moroccan tourist accommodations as an exchange between credit cards and fulfilled satisfaction. In Fez, McGuinness (2006: 205) argues that "the guest house, the dār edh dhiyâfa , the
157 'house of hospitality,' breaks with former ways of being in the medina: the principle of hospitality itself is betrayed. Generosity is turned into a commodity. Restored, decorated, and filled with historical bric a bracs, persons having interests very different from Moroccan inhabitants now live in houses." Foreign residents criticised Moroccan guest houses for their lack of hospitality because the owner is hardly present. However, rather than in the conflicts or in the criticisms, I'm interested in the relation of hospitality in tourist accommodations. Hospitality is a main concern for tourism accommodation owners in Fez. Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, said: "in Morocco, hospitality is very important. It is part of the culture." Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, declared he was a hospitable person "in my blood. I like speaking to people who wish to speak with me, and I can always send a message trough my face, trough my smile, and my heart to those who do not wish to talk." In his view, he "had to share this house with invitees in this country, to offer them the hospitality and love of this city. In others words, to be like the ambassador of my city." 99 Aside from these cultural and biological explanations, owners generally spoke of hospitality in two ways. Hospitality first relates to human encounters. According to Simon, a French guest house owner, "we cannot deny that a guest house is a business. But there is also a quest for human relations." Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, asserted that talking with the guests was part of hospitality, and that hospitality made Ziyarates home stays different from guest houses. Many foreign owners mentioned the talks they had with guests in front of the fire and with a glass of tea after a long day in the medina. If tradition mainly relies on the house (cf. infra p. 159), hospitality mainly depends on the owner's skills to manage his staff, to organise things, to give tips and advices to tourists and to make their stay as enjoyable as possible. These skills don't imply any specific and scholarly training but come from on the job training and personal experiences, such as having travelled a lot in guest houses or coming from a hotelkeeper family. Sharing constitutes the second way to speak of hospitality. Members of the Ziyarates programme insisted on hospitality as being at the heart of their project. The Ziyarates label proposes an "accommodation with Fassi families" to share their daily life in "a familial and warm atmosphere, […] to learn baking the bread, to bring it to the public oven, to go to the souk and negotiate, to learnt to know the best places of the medina behind closed doors, to participate to sacred song performances that only old wise man attend, to discover unsuspected places where
99 As Alserhan (2011: 171) defines it, "an Islamic hospitality experience must embrace the Islamic notions of hospitality in relation to congeniality and respect to visitors and relates to principles embedded in the Quran emphasizing the absolute importance of being a good host." In Muslim countries, this hospitality branded as an "Islamic hospitality" is a trend developing rapidly and becoming more diverse – its lastest manifestation is the development of full fledged Shariah compliant hotels whose customers come from various cultural and religious backgrounds. However, Arabs are for long known for their hospitality and generosity (In Islam, being generous with a guest link with believing in Allah and in the Last Day).
158 famous thinkers lived and wrote their spiritual experiences, to understand the essence of the city." As Khadija explained, "we do not have a guest house. We live here, and at the same time we receive people. It is a family living in a house and people coming." According to several Moroccan informants, anybody staying for free in a house is a guest during three days. It means the guest has nothing to do in the house, nothing to buy for eating, and nothing to pay for staying. Abdelhay declared that he considered tourists like members of the family. When he hosted tourists, he was more often at home, had breakfast with them, and changed his behaviour in order to not disturb them. At the same time, he considered them as clients paying at the end of the stay. Guest houses and home stays offer this paradoxical situation of an unpaid hospitality and a paid accommodation. According to Ruth, a guest house "is a private house where the owner welcomes guests coming to their house. And then, it is friendlier [than in a hotel], it is more like at home. Well, let's say it is closer to a private house. The idea is to welcome people we don't know, but to welcome them as if they were members of the family or friends." To explain this paradox between a friendly relation and a commercial one, Giraud (2007) splits up the tourist relation in three kinds of relations. The relation has to be commercial – to provide a paying accommodation –, friendly – to provide a relational and personal service – and ancillary – to provide services to the guests. The difficulty lies in the presentation, in the performance, of the commercial relation as a friendly one while at the same time providing paying services. Hosts and guests then play the game of an "enchanted relation" (Giraud, id.: 26) and owners use several means to turn the commercial relation into an euphemism. Owners anticipate guests’ requests by providing gargantuan breakfasts, by dressing the room every day, and by having a look on TripAdvisor comments to improve their services. They also offer small services such as tea and sweets or laundry. According to Fatima, a Moroccan guest house owner, hospitality consists in "very small things, such as offering a drink. We won't ask guests to pay for that." Finally, owners invert the roles. As they live in the medina, they present themselves as connoisseurs of the medina and its houses and as sources of information for the guests.
4.4.4. Tradition
Tourist accommodations offer a glaring example of composition with tradition, as owners generally want to present "the real Moroccan tradition" to their guests. 100 Similarly to castles used
100 Scholars particularly investigate the opposition between the authentic and the traditional versus the fake and the modern in tourist settings (Graburn, 1976; Waitt, 2000; Cauvin Verner, 2006). MacCannell (1973) speaks of "staged authenticity" as the construction of tourist attractions in response of the tourists’ quest for authenticity and the desire of hosts to make profit. Peleggi (2002) investigates the invention of traditions and the aesthetic and imaginative recreation of places in hotels in Thailand to satisfy the tourists’ quest for authenticity. Writing about guest houses in Morocco,
159 as bed and breakfasts in France (Morice, 2006), the tradition of hospitality in Fassi houses roots in a long term practice of welcoming guests. Tourist accommodations extend this practice and at the same time preserve the "traditional" materiality of buildings. However, this preservation depends on the imaginary of the owner about the past and the desires and needs of tourists in terms of comfort and images. Owners remove "ugly" elements and add more functional ones such as air conditioners and swimming pools. In Fez, no official document defines what tradition is. Members of the regional commission for listing refer to the Charter of Guest houses. This document mentions the words "tradition" or "traditional" several times but gives no definition or example of what it could be. More generally, there is no formal or institutional definition of what tradition is in Fez. Also, informants generally mixed tradition with authenticity, typicality and oldness. Emma declared her house was "typical, an ordinary house. I think it is very authentic in that way of being a true Moroccan house. I think it is very authentic. Traditional, yes, I think it is a traditional house. I think they're all the same in a way." Ruth at once mixed and distinguished the terms "tradition" and "authenticity." Her house is traditional "because it was built such a long time ago. So it is original, it is authentic. That's why I would say my house is traditional. It follows the Arab Andalus architectural laws. But traditional may have negative connotations. Traditional may be conservative and then prevent developments. In that sense, authentic is different." Also, when I asked him to describe a traditional house, Youssef, a Moroccan guest house owner, raised his eyebrows, and showed around with his hands [we were sitting in the patio of his house]. "This is it." Others were cautious and mentioned the relativity of tradition with regards to the time period. According to Omar, "when you speak of traditional, you always have to specify if it is tradition from 1200 or from 500 years ago." As tradition changes through time, Marie, a French tourist accommodation owner, undertook major changes in her house. The latter has fulfilled various functions – hotel, student accommodation, house for several families – and has undergone transformations through time. Marie then felt no remorse in adapting the house to her way of life. For instance, she built a kitchen on the rooftop terrace, not to go downstairs every time she needed something. However, informants listed various criteria to distinguish a mere traditional house from a
Msefer (2001: 45) speaks of "the fantasy of a cheap junk Orient," while Zerhouni (2004: 9) uses the word "kitsch" to refer to "the adapted tradition specific to weekend mister fix it". Evans and Humphrey (2002: 191) argue tourism creates a "fate of vernacular architecture." Taking the example of Mongolian yurts, they state a variety of yurts' after lives, such as a dwelling for Mongolian families in cities or an accommodation build by Chinese in tourist camps. If the former is an evolution of vernacular architecture, the tourist yurt is a replacement, a skeuomorph, that is to say an artefact "intended to evoke the appearance of objects regularly made of other materials. They often involve the transformation of previously practical features into decorative ones" (Evans and Humphrey, id.: 192).
160 tourist accommodation. Loïc ordered the qualities of a tourist accommodation in four categories that "normal houses" do not have. The first relates to the building. The house should be as big as possible and well decorated. The house should be well located – not too far from a sūq (i.e. market), a taxi station and a gate – and should provide guests with comfort thanks to air conditioners, a covered rooftop, a heated patio, and a practicable staircase. The second category consists of a warmth in welcoming guests and in helping them making their stay as good as possible. Thirdly, the bedrooms have to be clean, not smelling, and well ornate. Finally, owners should provide varied and generous food at breakfast and dinner, and mix Moroccan and Western dishes. In general, owners presented these qualities as more important than luxury. Talking of "residential houses," informants often mentioned the architectural structure as a traditional feature. According to Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, "a traditional house reflects the Moroccan architecture, the Arab Andalus architecture. This purely Moroccan and Andalus architecture is unique in the Arab world. Elsewhere, it is not similar, except a bit in Tlemçen." Architecturally speaking, "you need a patio in the middle and all the windows open on this patio." Diya made a distinction between the ryad and the dār . "A ryad relates to a fountain and a garden. But here [we are in Café Clock], it is not a ryad. It is a dār . A dār can be a palace, but there is no garden. It is a difference to notice." In order to shed light on the traditional architectural features of houses, Moroccans often compared them to flats in the New City. In a traditional house, one can find a patio, traditional mosaic on the ground and on the walls , wrought iron, wood work, carved and/or painted plaster, Iraqi glass, marble , a fountain. While flats look like boxes, are very small and "European like." Mohammed, a Ziyarates member, told his house was "obviously a traditional house. The big doors, the high ceilings, the high walls, the craft in the wood and the ceilings, the rooms are made in a handcrafted way. There is the introduction of a m’allem [i.e. master craftsman]. One can see it is traditional. It is not a flat." Materials are also part of a traditional house. According to Aziz, a Moroccan guest house manager, traditional houses were built with "rocks and beldi [i.e. traditional] bricks. This is how we built houses in the medina. And there was no cement, only jief [i.e. lime]. […] Lime soaked in water more than a year and the m’allem [i.e. master craftsman] added water from time to time for the lime not to dry. It was stronger than cement." In Jawad’s view, this traditional stuff is stronger and more resistant to time than industrial and modern stuff. Informants also linked tradition to furnishing. Omar took the example of the salon we sat in at Riad al Bartal to describe a traditional salon. "It is exactly this, flashy, with low tables, a mirror, vases, carpets. But the bookshelves, books and the stove look at odds with a traditional salon. We
161 had no bookshelves at home. Do not forget that most people were illiterate." He continued: "I, a traditional salon, there are mattresses, very high and very tough. For my mother, it was very expensive stuff, the mattresses, the covers and the cushions. We weren't allowed to sit there when there were no guests. We got some slaps when we were children! […] The patio, it was for everyday life. But in the salon, there was the fraj [i.e. low banquette], there was a wonderful carpet, there was... It was forbidden to enter." Informants also often compared traditional and modern furnishing. In Marie’s view, "the lounge spirit is not different [from the low banquette style]. You may interpret this way of life in a more or less contemporary way. You can make traditional Moroccan banquettes in the café and restaurants of the New City. In Maison Blanche [i.e. a gastronomic restaurant in the New City] for instance, they used relatively traditional materials. It is modern volumes and architecture, but they have more traditional colours and furniture. […] I think that inside, you can interpret things, but outside, I'm shocked when I see traditional houses with super bright colours not related to the environment." A fourth criterion consists in the way of life in the house. Helen, the British manager of a renting agency, underlined the internal life. "That it's hidden, no window to the outside, that the door, that from the front door there is always a corner, you always have to turn so that no one can see inside your house." She added that in traditional houses, "there is no designated room, apart from the kitchen. All the other rooms could be a bedroom, could be a dining room, could be somewhere to sit... And people move around. When Westerners buy the houses, they immediately designate a room: that's my bedroom, that's my office."
Critics of tourist accommodations often accuse owners of altering these four traditional features. Firstly, the permanent stay of various guests replaced the permanent stay of Moroccan inhabitants. However, Gigi pointed a continuum between the traditional house and the tourist accommodation: there is always somebody at home to open the door or to prepare tea and food. Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, found tradition in the way to welcome guests. "I want to be there, because I want to give to my visitors what should be given in the right traditional way." Secondly, in the literature dedicated to traditional houses (cf. supra p. 81), families "traditionally" used the Moroccan salons to live – eat, sleep, watch TV – and they received guests in the dedicated salon. In Ziyarates home stays, one salon remained the living, or lively, room of the house where members of the family spend their time, watch television, eat and sleep. The other salons became bedrooms for tourists. Amal had to "pick up" her Moroccan salon furniture in one corner to install a double bed for the guests. She also installed a bed in the bartal (i.e. alcove opened
162 on the patio) instead of a banquette. According to her, these changes bring economic inputs. In both tourist accommodations and houses rented by several Moroccan families, dwellers were used the salons around the patio as bedrooms. In guest houses, the salon is the meeting place par excellence, the place to have a glass of tea, to read books from the library, to listen to music, to have a talk in front of the fireplace during winter evenings, to wait for the guide or the taxi driver. As Australian tourist accommodation owner Emma put it, "especially in winter we have wonderful conversations there. It is a great conversation room. It is cosy. And it is comfortable. And it is part of a Moroccan home. It is a central core." In a way, the salon replaced the patio as the central room in the house. Guest house owners often use the central courtyard as a dining room. While in houses inhabited by several families, the patio sometimes becomes an empty space submitted to sharing rules – to clean it, to share the tap or fountain, to respect intimacy when a man enters into the house, or to throw the rubbish. Many foreigners declared that the rooftop terrace was the place of women in traditional houses, where they washed – and still wash – clothes, dried food and talked to each other. However, Omar explained, "[the rooftop terrace] was not the most important room for us," because in Fez, the pride given to white skin made of the sun the enemy of women. Maids in rich families worked on the rooftop. Also, both Mernisi and Sefroui described in their books the rooftop terrace as the place where, "traditionally" children were playing, and women talked to each other. Among leisure activities there was – and there still is – the letting go of homing pigeons kept in an aviary on the rooftop. According to foreigners, the aviary marks the Moroccan house and although some posses a birdcage with singing birds, no one mentioned the possibility of having pigeons. They got rid of the aviary when moving into the house. Amal added, "when I was a child, my mother had medicinal herbs. When we had a fever, we went up on the roof." In guest houses, owners increased the number of plants on the rooftop, which has become a place to have breakfast, to sunbathe, to look at the medina. Terraces of guest houses are furnished, and owners, or the staff, invite tourists to spend time there.
Pic. 29. Furniture on the rooftop terrace in a guest house. Credit: M. Istasse
163 Tourists also care for tradition. In their view, tradition relates rather to a specific charm and atmosphere than to the conformity to a past way of life. Perceiving the place as old is more important than living in the past. On the basis of the questionnaire I distributed in several guest houses, tourists most often thought the house they had stayed in was more or less similar to the majority of houses in the medina – although some admitted they didn't visit any other house in the medina. Others based their answers on what they had seen and read. Few established a perfect similarity between guest houses and residential houses. On the one hand, they saw similarities in food – shopping at the local market, bread baked at the oven or at home –, in the historical and authentic atmosphere – "I guess that the house is a very good sample of the medina houses or at least it recreates the mood of the city and the imperial style" (Italian guest) –, in the materials – "I think the house is typically Fassi with the zelij [i.e. mosaic], the stucco, the patio, the fountain and the rooftop" (French guest) – and in the way of life – employees look like inhabitants met in the street. On the other hand, the main differences relate to the luxury and European standards in guest houses and to the fact that guest houses belong to "a privileged population." Also, the majority of tourists didn't want to live in such houses. As an Italian guest put it, "it is too much for me. As my first residence, I would prefer a simpler house. But this is perfect for a special weekend." As some wrote, holidays are an opportunity to discover other places than those "at home." In their comments on TripAdvisor, tourists mentioned the magic of Fassi houses rather than their tradition. They described the wonderful patio or the rooftop terrace where to rest, to have the breakfast, to sunbathe and to get nice views on the medina – the best moments being the prayer call and sunset. They reminded the architectural features of the house, the big and well decorated bedrooms – which were romantic, wonderful, Moroccan looking – with all the comfort needed – quietness, cleanliness, comfortable bed, air conditioning, ample supplies of hot water. They underlined the atmosphere created by the light – games of light and shadow, softened lighting of Moroccan lamps –, the remote muezzin’s call to prayer and the good location of the house. Some spoke of "old and real Fassi house," of "huge traditional and authentic house," "restored authentically," "respecting the traditions in the decoration and furnishing" and "looking like a museum." All of this participates to a magical stay in a wonderful and gorgeous place, a "total rapture in the discovery of this sublime ryad," a perfect stay out of the usual scenery, but providing all the comfort that relaxing holidays require. By investing in medina houses, owners made use of the walls but also of their emotional content to provide tourists with an experience. Owners knew about the importance of the atmosphere, of the "staged tradition" or of "folklorisation" in their tourist accommodation. Although Moroccan guest house manager Aziz stated that going in a guest house was like "going home" and "living like Moroccans were living
164 before," other owners geared traditional works towards guests only. Members of a Ziyarates family added carved plaster and wooden doors in the courtyard during the updating works. However, they kept their private first floor empty of traditional decoration. As Jean Pierre, a French guest house owner, put it, "the world of tourism is not that of reality. People on holidays are happier than usual. They come on holidays, and they are in a bubble for a few days," and this bubble prevents from a cultural or emotional shock. As a consequence, he wanted to provide "an atmosphere in an exceptional place, a pleasant environment and quality services." For instance, people couldn't come to dinner in shorts and t shirt and employees would wear a kaftan (i.e. traditional clothe). "I don't want a carnival, but everybody has to play the game."
I focused on tourist accommodations for special relations with the house and its materiality occur within them. I firstly showed that Moroccan guest house owners planned their tourism activity. Foreigners did sometimes open a tourist accommodation to have money or to have an activity in Fez and to not get bored. Moroccan inhabitants joined the Ziyarates home stay programme to have some money, to stay in their house, and to welcome guests legally. Also, by turning houses into tourist accommodations, owners give their house a new life as a place and a decor in the international market of tourism (McGuinness and Mouhli, 2013). However, opening a tourist accommodation also means losing privacy and intimacy if one does not live in a separate house. Owners then develop practices and devices to preserve their intimacy and to feel at home. They allow a limited appropriation to their guests through rules – forbidden or hidden rooms – and practices – to choose the guests, not to eat with them. Owners also put emphasis on hospitality, and more generally on human relations in the context of an enchanted relation between hosts and guests turning the commercial relation into a euphemism. Finally, owners encroach upon tradition to present an atmosphere far from the daily practices of Moroccan inhabitants. This focus on tourist accommodations shouldn’t suggest that changes in the "tradition" occur only in tourist accommodations. Moroccan informants also undertook changes in their house with the aim of modernisation. Television and display cabinets have locations of pride place in the courtyard or the salon, like the satellite dish on the roof and the fridge in the kitchen. Households improved their kitchen by making it bigger, and their bathroom by building a shower. Modern tiles replaced mosaic . Moroccan inhabitants also practice what scholars often investigate as "folklorisation" (Kurzac Souali, 2007) or "staged authenticity" (MacCannell, 1973). All these changes, rather than inventions, are based on an "epistemology of presupposition" (Bizzochi, in Fabre, 2009). It means that both inhabitants and tourist accommodation owners change their house
165 according to their images, tastes, expectations, souvenirs, and needs rather than according to any conformity with the past as officially described by scholars. 101 Arkoun (1995) underline this same epistemology, or at least this same trend, in the construction of mosques based on stereotypical images of Islamic architecture, while Laarsi (2009) shed light on the "maroccanisation" of architecture by Moroccan architects since the 1980s.
101 Vellinga (2006/2007) names this process of appropriation of and negotiation with the past the "inventiveness of tradition" – rather than the invention which suppose a real object.
166 4.5. Living with the house
In this short chapter, I focus on the agency of houses. 102 Latour (2007) and Venkatesan (2009) make a plea for a symmetry between human beings and things – what is called "thingism" (Jansen, 2013) –, Appadurai (1986) for a social life of things and Ingold (2007b) for a material one. Keane (2005) supports the idea of a power of things and Miller (2001) investigates their material consequences. Rather than a commitment to an approach in terms of human agency or the agency of things, I describe how the materiality of houses, their presence and the engagement of human beings with them, influence its inhabitants, and what kind of agency inhabitants allocate to their house. Following Miller (2001) and Ingold (2007b), materiality and materials have consequences. A steep staircase invites inhabitants to gather their activities in the ground floor and prevent elderly persons to go on the rooftop terrace. Luminosity also influences dwellers. Abderahim, a Moroccan inhabitant, told me that some years ago, a foreigner bought a house in the medina. After two years, the house was still under construction and both the house and the owner looked sad. The former owner had condemned most of the windows because of the nearby school. This lack of luminosity influenced the mood of the foreign owner who decided to open the windows again. The house got brighter, the works finished quickly and the owner got happier. Several Moroccan elites, members of institutions as well as inhabitants of the New City associated the close minded medina inhabitants to their houses: how could someone be happy and open minded when he lives in a rabbit hole? Informants allocated houses with agency by placing them at the basis of actions they undertook or by underlining what the house provided them with. When used as a tourist accommodation or a cultural place, the house provides money. Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, aimed to "make the house work." To earn more money, she intended to sell her current house where she
102 A focus on the agency of things raises the danger to exaggerate the material side of the dichotomy between things and human beings or to overestimate representations and what things stand for. If objects have the power to make human beings act (Keane, 2005), looks at the house as an actor in the situation makes appear other components – such as imagination and creativity, books and websites – on the one hand, and gives information about the way human beings provide a house with intentionality on the other. The power of objects doesn't automatically lead to alienation (Miller, 2001) and shouldn’t be understood literally. As Jansen (2013) underlines, things always need human beings to act. If the action and the materials consequences of things participate to the occurrence of an event and the emergence of a situation, human practices are determinant in the final analysis. A bullet cannot kill if a human being hadn’t moved his/her finger on the trigger of a gun. In that view, accountability (Jansen, 2013) rather than intentionality (Gell, 1994) appears to be a more heuristic notion. If the life or the spirits of things are subjected to debates, their presence, their affordance, their reliability and their availability characterise any situation or occurrence. Instead of an analytical distinction between human and non human actants, the matter of agency is a methodological dilemma (Jansen, id.). A distinction between the human and the non human is a gain for any description and raises the question of accountability. This notion doesn’t preclude things or human beings from the analysis but sheds light on the necessary conditions of their action, be it located in the materiality of things or the intentionality of human beings.
167 could welcome a maximum of three guests. More generally, many Ziyarates families decided not to sell their house after they had the opportunity to welcome paying guests. In their view, although selling the house would have brought a lot of money, particularly since prices increased in the property market, welcoming guests has turned the house into a monthly and steadier money provider. Amal also declared she travelled "by welcoming people from all over the world in my house. I visit the world through the clients and I learn a lot of things," such as foreign languages. As Hamza, a Moroccan guest house owner, put it, "in a guest house, you meet people everyday, you know stories." Tourist accommodation owners often underlined they met people they wouldn't have met otherwise. Evelyne, a French guest house owner, remembered a Colombian coffee producer and a famous surgeon. She wouldn't have talked to them in other circumstances. According to British resident Mike, Moroccans and foreigners meet in his Café Clock, a place of dialogue and encounter, a free and open space, a "cultural crossroad" where "people feel comfortable." A tourist accommodation is also at the basis of a website for the promotion and presentation of the house, ranging from a Facebook page to an elaborated website. Aside from tourist accommodation owners, some informants – mainly foreigners – have a blog describing the restoration work 103 or their life. 104 Also, http://www.houseinfez.com/ is a famous website for giving advice to buying a house in Fez and tips about what to do and where to eat in Fez. Another blog, http://ryadzany.blogspot.be/ , gives general information about what happens in Fez and Morocco. The webmaster of this blog started with the restoration works in his house, Riad Zany, and ended in one of the most famous blogs about Fez and Morocco. His wife, Suzanna Clarke, wrote a best seller about the restoration experience, A House in Fez . This book is more famous among foreigners than the "bible" edited by the CNRS about the architecture and famous houses in Fez. Houses in Fez also inspired the painter Jonathan Lane and the photographers Thierry Poullet and Gérard Chemit. Many f oreigners asserted that the house "gave me the possibility to express my creativity. I’m not an architect, but I drew the plans, I did the interior architecture, I made the furniture, I did mostly everything. The house allowed me to do that," explained Emma, an Australian tourist accommodation owner. Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, insisted on imagination in his work, which consisted of "bringing comfort and letting my imagination run wild," "creating spaces that fit our way of life, our habits in terms of comfort." In his house, "I brought modern comfort but I respected the architecture. I diverted the function of some rooms to retrieve them and I attributed them new functions. For instance, a junk room, a room without light formerly used to store things, I made into a kitchen. A passageway, I made into a bathroom. A
103 http://ryadzitounafesrenovation.unblog.fr/ 104 http://evelyninmorocco.blogspot.be/ ; http://ryad9.blogspot.be/ ;http://souafine.blogspot.be/
168 cubbyhole, I made into a dressing. […] And this is what I really enjoy, creating new spaces with new functions. This creation is the most interesting thing to me." Valentin also put to the fore this creative and handwork. Working as an airline pilot, he has few opportunities to innovate. Construction works constitute a counter balance to his daily life. To others, creativity was not totally new. Christina, an American resident, has "always been good at creating environments. So this [i.e. her house in Fez] is just another example. I can do that anywhere. […] It just gives me another opportunity of expression. […] I'm not very good at creating something new. I'm not good at making new things. But I'm very good if you give me something, and I will make something out of it. I've always been good at using what I have and making it looking nice." Steve, an American tourist accommodation owner, was also used to being creative. "It’s been about 20 years I develop products. I lived in Asia where I developed craft products for years. After that, I worked in the luxury area. I worked with craft masters, so craft is not something at odds to me." According to him, the real issue about creativity is knowledge. "If you know how to do things, you can replicate or use the elements to create novelties. You have to understand in order to create. […] The real question is ‘can people can create while they don't know what it represents?’ Lack of knowledge limits creation. And there is a difference between imitation and creation." In his view, it explains the lack of creativity among Moroccan craftsmen and workers, who content themselves with imitating their forefathers. Once you have the house and the imagination, "whatever you can dream, you can get!" exclaimed Kate, an American guest house owner. In view of many foreign informants, one has just to take his inspiration from the surroundings and then to customise it. They mentioned and presented a table or a cupboard they made from old doors. Olivier, a Belgian resident, wanted to make bags from Hessian and to sell them under the brand "Made in A." Hannah, an Irish resident, underlined the link between creativity and free time. Foreigners living in Fez have more free time than in Europe and some use it to create. She spent a lot of time at home "creating," that is to say making things she was not used to in Ireland such as jam, dry tomatoes or soap. She evoked the rising of a creative class in Fez. Jess's initiative was typical of this foreign "creative class" rising in Fez. Two or three times a year, for two weeks, she rented a shop where she sold artistic creations such as paintings, jewels and works of art. These creations were mainly foreign made and cost more than the same items one may find in a bazaar. Necklaces cost 300 Dh (27 €) instead of 200 Dh (18 €), brooches 200 Dh (18 €) and earrings 70 Dh (6.5 €) instead of 30 Dh (2.5 €). Jess justified the higher price saying she doesn't sell souvenirs but an idea of art. A house also allows dreaming and escaping from daily life. Firstly, to many foreign residents, the house constitutes a project, a new start in life. Secondly, once the house is finished, it
169 provides its inhabitants with dreams. Nora, a British guest house owner, told her house was " a gateway to the outside world for me. If I didn't have a project, being married to a Moroccan, being a Western woman married to a Moroccan. I don't really know which society I live in, I don't want to conform to Moroccan standards, I would be like a slave in the kitchen, and cleaning, and have no contact with men who aren't my husband in a friendly way. I have brains and I use them. So having a guest house means I can have contacts with Westerners. I'm not completely isolated, and it doesn't matter that much if I'm not leaving the house. So I'm fulfilling my expectations as a wife. I'm not hanging around in the street. And I'm fulfilling my need to have contacts with Westerners. So basically, the idea of having a guest house is a selfish one but I'm not bored. " In addition to inspiration, creativity and imagination, French resident Sarah claimed her house "brings me a hell of energy! I was thinking yesterday, 'It is crazy, I manage to carry out several things simultaneously. The training and stages [at the Institut Français ], the house, the relation with craftsmen and friends, the trips between France and Morocco'. And a lot of people asked me 'But how do you manage to do all of that?' Well, I feel like… I don't know. I'm like carried by something. I don't feel tired, I don't feel I have to make a superhuman effort up to say 'Damn, I will never manage, it is too difficult'. No, I know I do a lot of things, but I do them as if energy carries me." Foreigners likely spoke about the positive or negative energy of their house. Informants made of the house an actor when they provided it with a soul and made it alive cf. infra. p. 229). This life is longer than human life. The house was there before them and will survive them. According to Abderahim, a Moroccan employee in a tourist restaurant, each house has a different personality, and the soul of the house is the second necessary term to make the house alive. If one of them leaves the house, " raHmat. Dār f lkhatar (i.e. It dies. The house is in danger)". The house and its inhabitants then have to match. Within the same vein, some foreigners asserted that houses choose their inhabitants. After having accepted Jawad to work in her house, Ruth told me she wasn't wrong to employ him because the house accepted him. According to her, some persons are not welcomed in her house. She said that the house made her suffer during the construction works due to all the problems she encountered (delays, work badly done and had to be redone, robberies). A Rabat UNESCO office member explained the spirit of architecture – which is the integration of a building into its environment and the spirit of Fez – which is a medina smelling happiness and having a soul – occur "when space is lively, human, breathing. Is it a charm? I don't know. Anyway, it influences people and gives the house a cachet." In the case of foreigners particularly, the house instigated a learning process. Many foreigners didn't know anything about construction works or managing a tourist accommodation before coming to Fez. B eing civil servants, soldiers, salesman, youth workers, chief or restaurant
170 managers in their country of origin, they had to become builders and managers. Benoit presented this experience as "a huge creation in all aspects. I didn't really choose, I didn't want to be a guest house manager, we already talked about that. But I like doing things for people, that people feel comfortable and that they leave the house in better condition than when they arrived." Also, the supervision of the works bored him until he could start decorating and furnishing the house. "I think if I had to find a new professional orientation, I could have thought of interior decorator."
Rather than on their power, a focus on the agency of houses shows their location at a crossroad between networks. I sketched out an economic network – the house brings money to their owners when it is used as a tourist accommodation –, a media network – owners create websites and write books –, a network of fiction – creativity and imagination –, a network of attachment – owners mention the mix of human beings and objects when they speak of the house as a place of encounter –, and a network of psyche – inhabitants provide the house with a soul. This focus also sheds light on the interweaving pattern between things and human actors in an environment. Rather than independent actors provided with an additional feature magically attributed to them and named "agency" (Ingold, 2011), houses are available (Jansen, 2013) for imagination and creativity to take place, are accountable for owners to travel while staying in their house. Houses are not agents able to act back but hives of activities and creations. Houses are available because they are made of materials that last longer than their materiality. Inhabitants change the furnishing and the architectural decoration of their house but they maintain the basic materials when undertaking construction works. As such, materials give life to the house by making it last through time at the same time as they show the passage of life – evident for instance in the patina of wood that David cherished. Houses, and things in general, have no agency per se but have to be immersed in a web, in a meshwork of materials and lines of force such as creativity. Agency then depends on the environment rather than on actors. It calls for skilled actors to give attention to their environment, to couple perception and action, and to develop their skills through time.
171 4.6. Living in heritage
"And he [the guide] imitated the operation, imitated by some tourists whose awkwardness provoked laughs. But do not think the Oasian lack any civility for all that. They knew basic rules of politeness in the Sahara. Before any meal, one needs to wash his hands in a water source or with the trickle of water leaking from a pitcher held by somebody else. One also has to invoke the benediction of Allah. One is not allowed to drink water during the meal but only after the main dish. Water moves to the right and one has to take the pitcher or the pot with his two hands. It is not allowed to drink while standing. If one is standing, he has to kneel in order to drink. And eggs are not shared. Idriss was listening with astonishment. These daily life rules, he knew them for having long practised them, but spontaneously without having ever heard their wording. To hear them from the mouth of a Frenchman mixed in a group of tourists made him somewhat dizzy. He felt as if he had been snatched away from himself, as if his soul had suddenly left his body, and observed him with astonishment from outside." Tournier (1986: 78, my translation)
When houses become tourist accommodations or ruins, their owners sometimes reject them as places to live – they consider their house as a burden they want to get rid off or they move to the New City. On the other hand, inhabitants may give importance to the architectural decoration and its symbols. These features are heritage characteristics as many scholars defined (Amiotte Suchet and Floux, 2002; Bromberger and al. 2004). An element has to lose its usual functional value in order to become heritage. However, inhabitants barely consider their house as heritage. Moreover, Moroccan elites, members of institutions and foreigners often assert that Moroccan inhabitants don't have any heritage skills and do not take care of their house. In other words, Moroccan inhabitants leave their houses falling down, replace traditional mosaic by modern tiles, hide a rotten ceiling behind a fake plaster ceiling to "hide their misery," have no taste, and wash the floor with too much water – which results in water seepage and rotten wooden beams supporting the ceiling. According to Hassan, since the rural migration in the 1980s, there is no more respect for the architectural aspect of houses. In order to preserve them, it is first and foremost important to "respect the peculiarities of a house and to ensure it a life." Also, "the respect of old shapes, of the
172 traditional aspect of the place is of prime importance. There are two essential things to preserve: the plan display and the architectural decoration." Amélie, a French guest house owner, declared that when she arrived, "people [i.e. Moroccan inhabitants] had no idea of their heritage and couldn't estimate its worth. They were rather happy to get rid of it, you see. So, a lot of families blithely sold their house and pocketed the money to get a flat in the New City. And they didn't care about what was done with wood and architectural decoration. It didn't really matter to them." Meriem, a Moroccan architect, mentioned that " [p]eople [i.e. Moroccan inhabitants] do not maintain their house maybe because they do not feel interested in this space. The medina is 12 centuries old, and during 12 centuries, inhabitants maintained it because they thought their lives were there. So, I wonder if people living in the medina really perceive the value of this space. I mean I inhabit a normal house built less than 20 years ago. When there is a leak, I fix it. When a tile falls, I replace it. I look after cleanliness. When there is dampness, I look for its origins. Because it is my house, I feel at home. So I wonder why those people do not feel the need to repair." Foreigners compared this lack of awareness in Fez with France’s. François, a French tourist accommodation owner, stated that in Morocco "I don't know if they are unaware of this [i.e. heritage preservation] but it is not a priority. I mean, in France, a house threatening to fall down is preserved. Everybody shows interested in heritage. Here, I feel heritage conservation interests only a few elites and relates to famous monuments... […] But you know, they [i.e. Moroccans] don't have this notion of heritage, of the heritage richness. It is not in their culture. It doesn't interest them." Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, recalled "we had the same chronic fuckwittery [i.e. irksome foolishness ] in France in the early 1960s when people painted everything with this thick brown gel: shutters, wood. Everything was covered with brown." Some Moroccan elites even pointed the lack of interest Moroccans have for their history. In July 2012, one could read in a newspaper after the Spanish Minister of Interior came in Melilla to commemorate the Anoual battle. 105 "Spaniards commemorate this battle they lost, while us, who took on an aura of this victory, we have forgotten it. Nations willing to be reconciled with their own history, willing to situate their present in the continuity of their past, remember even their crisis... While people willing to create a gap between their history and their present, they forget or neglect even their victories and acts of glory. […] If we had to blame anybody, it would be ourselves, for being a nation without memory or history, without politicians and managers knowing the value of victories and glory" (Damoune, 2012). Some foreigners extended this statement of blindness to members of institutions. Valentin, a French resident, told one of his house was labelled "of heritage interest" by the Inspector of
105 Battle between Spain and Morocco in 1921, lost by the Spaniards.
173 Historical Monuments. As a consequence, for the Inspector standard, it could not be changed, and restoration works should be undertaken under his supervision. Valentin and his partners have undertaken works for six years in the house, "a wonderful work of restoration as everybody tells us. But this guy, he even doesn't see his heritage is safeguarded." The Inspector indeed tried to block the building site for any reason. According to Valentin, "they [i.e. members of the Inspection of Historical Monuments] were brain washed by UNESCO." As a consequence, they apply texts without understanding them, without thinking, without any flexibility. Also, during one walk in the medina, David stopped in front of a house – the former meeting room of the medina authorities and nowadays a youth club – and showed me the mosaic on the facade. Some years ago, public authorities decided to restore the facade, and instead of redoing the mosaic, they removed part of it and replaced it by plaster. David condemned this act for "they mucked up the zelij [i.e. mosaic ]. This pattern was unique. It is now impossible to redo it. No craftsman is able to do it again." Moroccan elites and foreign residents sometimes admitted that they were also blind to heritage. "We are inside, we are integrated with it [i.e. heritage]!" (Gigi). In contrast to tourists who visit it and see it, inhabitants don't see it anymore. Also, they generally lack interest in actions undertaken by institutions to preserve and restore houses and heritage in Fez. They thought public authorities should undertake more works but they criticised what had already been done. Many saw tourists as the main targets of these works. Mehdi, a Moroccan guest house employee, found the new city door in Batha "pretty, but not necessary. It is an improper investment." Benoit compared that door to a triumphal arch placed in the middle of nowhere, without any city wall around it. According to him, public authorities would better spend the money in public infrastructures such as roads or trees. But, according to many informants, public authorities don’t seem to have an interest in the medina. Ahmed, a Moroccan guest house owner, suggested, " [w]e have to talk about what we want to do with this heritage. Do we want to destroy it, do we want to keep it, do we want to restore it, do we want to make benefits from it? It is an important issue. Because when we wanted to build the Tangier Med port, we dedicated money to make it concrete. Because it was a collective will. But do we want to do the same with our architecture in the medina? I don't know if there is the same will." On the other hand, Gigi happily welcomed the R'Cif works, stating that families and more particularly women could use the new square to meet while children are playing. Jean Pierre , a French guest house owner, appreciated the streets are painted in the same colour. "I think that the medina should be painted in one colour. Because the medina is an entity, and it provides the medina with an identity." Amélie mentioned a lot of changes between 2009 and 2010. Streets have been laid with cobblestones everywhere, wood crosspieces have been installed as rooftop at Boujloud, metal
174 doors have been replaced by wood ones in the same area. Some informants even defended public authorities, or at least explained their lack of efficiency. They distinguished the institutions in charge of the works and the origin of money. According to Jawad, "there is a difference. ADER is not the mejliss baladi [i.e. communal council ]. Hada bouHadou, Hada BouHadou [i.e. they are on one side, the others are on another side ]. It is not the same money. Fountains and gates, it is mesjliss baladi . Houses, it is ADER. It is different." Others pointed out the complexity of work undertaking in Fez. Meriem thought that "it would be an opportunity for me [to carry projects in the medina]. But with all the limitations coming from the Ministry of Culture, ADER, the architectural prescriptions... You have to use such material, such technique lalalala. […] It is specific to the medina, because all the cities don't have ADER. I think it is specific to Fez because there is an institution in charge of the medina. When one institution is specifically in charge of the medina, the works are a little bit more hectic in this area."
The wider spread explanation Moroccans gave for this little interest in and this blindness to houses and heritage is the lack of money. They underlined the expensive cost of works. The regime of tenure is another wide spread explanation, as Frederica, a Spanish resident put it. "I rent a house. If I notice it starts collapsing, I'm not going to fix it, because it is not my house, and I know that some time later, I'll leave." Omar added closeness to the medina to explain the Moroccans’ blindness to cultural heritage. "Remove inhabitants from the medina, place them in a new place to live, and they will consider the medina as a heritage. People living now in the medina see it as a danger. But they don't have the money to move out. Here, we say that the one whose hand is in the water is the same as the one whose hand is in the fire. People living in the medina don't have the time to think of the beauty of things. When they go back home, they see the zelij [i.e. mosaic] but they also see the 5 or 6 meter high crack on the wall. When you go home, you see this crack on the wall, and you have children, to preserve heritage is not as valuable as to same human lives. So, people sleeping in such conditions do not talk about heritage. When a house collapses, people see the house, and the deaths. They won't say it is heritage." Foreigners also gave reasons for this lack of skills and interest. Moroccan inhabitants don’t know what architecture and heritage are – educational problem –, they don’t have the money to take care of their house – economic problem –, they don’t know where to ask for some help – political problem –, they don’t like what is old – taste problem –, they are not used to – cultural problem. Christina, an American resident, tried to understand why Moroccans did not take care of what foreigner tried to preserve. " You know, people don't look very far ahead. If there is a problem, they fix it. And they don't look to the next. Second, I think that we, as foreigners, look for perfection.
175 And in Orient, perfection is never archived. So we are trying to archive perfection, so we never finish." In her view, culture and the change in the population explain why current inhabitants do not care about houses and heritage. It is not their culture, their habit to do so. Value is another reason for the alleged lack of skill and interest. In general, Moroccans do not value what is old. According to Taoufiq, an Arabic teacher, Moroccans see ruins in heritage. As a consequence, they sell old houses and they buy new ones in the New City, a place they associate with comfort. On the contrary, foreigners, and mostly Americans, like the medina and heritage because of their young country. In the medina, they experience another world, an old one. Valentin and his wife remembered when they visited houses to buy, they saw many without any interest in their view but immediately habitable in Moroccans’ view. While what Moroccans presented them like ruins, "there was something interesting there. There was heritage there." In addition to value, heritage is a matter of education. David showed me the removal of friezes at the Sidi Ahmed Chaoui mausoleum. These friezes were Koranic writings. According to him, a lack of respect, interest and knowledge pushed people from the young generation to commit such an act. An educated man would never have committed it because it is shameful to destroy a religious place. Philippe, a French art historian, added that "Moroccans obviously don't have any artistic knowledge. They don't have any idea about what is beautiful and what is not. At school, they do not learn to draw. They do not learn the basis of art history. And they face things they do not understand. So, in front of painted wood, when you say to a Moroccan 'This door dates back to that time', he answers 'How do you know that?', and I say 'I know it because it is painted wood, with this specific pattern, so it dates from this period'. He would know it if he had learned it at school." According to Hassan, houses and heritage preservation "is a matter of means and awareness. We need to raise awareness on the nature of interventions, because some inhabitants think protection may be reached by the use of modern materials. If they knew the impact of those techniques, they would change their mind. So, it is a matter of awareness that we have to improve." In a Moroccan photographer’s view, one has to know and understand history in order to appreciate heritage. Without this education, inhabitants cannot be proud of their city. They cannot appreciate their house or upkeep it properly. Aside from explanations of this cultural blindness, several informants mentioned that Moroccan inhabitants have their own way to take care of houses. I described the works Jawad undertook in his house during my stay. Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, remembered his sister had to remove her shoe heel before entering into the patio, in order not to damage the floor mosaic . He also taught me how to recognise houses of Fassi families. The wood on the stairs is not damaged because people used to place their foot in the middle of the step, and not on the wood board.
176 According to Ruth, " they [i.e. former Fassi that showed her their house] really touched me with their love for their house. Not all of them. Of course, some want to preserve, but others do not mind, and do not take care of the house. But there are those who are touched by heritage because they spent their childhood in these houses. Sometimes, they are eager to open a museum. More and more Fassi are coming back in Fez, and are touched by the city. They want to feel the link. A friend of mine, whose family is from Fez but living in Casa, wants to settle in Fez for some time." Abdelaziz, a Morocco French guest house owner, carefully reminded that "there are many reasons to desire industrial tiles at home. Somebody put industrial tiles because he finds them trendier, more elegant, more beautiful, and easier to clean. It is one thing. But when one removes mosaic to put industrial tiles, it is something different. And this is where education matters."
Foreigners on their side are said, after Kurzac Souali (2006), to constitute a touchstone in raising heritage awareness. Ahmed, a Moroccan guest house owner, pointed to the role of Fez Riads – a renting agency – in the preservation of the medina. According to him, the British manager succeeded in what Moroccans failed to do for their city. Fez Riads is an example for Moroccans, teaches them a lesson, as a foreigner "restore our history and our geography." Laïla Skalli, a Moroccan architect, particularly put to the fore the presence of foreigners and the development of tourism to explain the rise in heritage awareness in Morocco. "Thanks to the guest house phenomena, people are interested in their heritage, but only under the tourism aspect. That is to say that before, they considered heritage as something old, to throw away, and to get rid of. And now, they are kind of proud because heritage represents a positive identity outside Morocco. So, heritage has nearly become a marketing brand. It is a recent trend, a second step. It is better than nothing, but it is not enough. People still do not consider heritage for itself, having simply and only a value of heritage. I think it has limits, because as a consequence, during the rehabilitation, one favours what is useful for tourism purposes instead of favouring what is useful for the population. So, as long as we don't have a consideration for heritage in itself, as long as the approach of heritage is a tourism one, I think it is not enough." As Violier (2005) writes, foreigners are often the initiators of a heritagization process by taking over a neglected place. Tourism and migration appropriate places that inhabitants consider as secondary. These inhabitants need a revelation of their heritage through its appropriation by others. They then re conquer their heritage because they feel dispossessed or because they do not recognise themselves in the discourses produced by foreigners. However, in Fez, newcomers tend to forget that those places were not empty at the beginning even if they were marginalised or neglected.
177 Scholars also propose explanations for the blindness to heritage and the lack of care. Navez Bouchanine (1991) underlines that Moroccans generally wait and expect from the State to clean up houses, to provide water and electricity supply, public lighting or a road network. The end of the Providence State and its replacement by a policy of decentralisation since the mid 1970s did not prove to be successful. The lack of civil organisation to improve the urban environment in the medina echoes the oft heard complaints about the inefficiency of the Moroccan State. Taking the example of ADER, informants know they could have money from this institution but they don’t ask because they want to avoid problems with the State or they wait their house nearly collapse in order to benefit from the 100% reimbursed intervention of ADER. Arkoun (1990) for his part points out an ideological change. According to him, the current inadequate cultural conservation in the Arab World results from the replacement of elitist and popular cultures by a populist culture. With the demographic growth, the rural exodus to urban centres, the disappearance of guilds and the industrial system of production, history has become an ideological tool in a nationalist enterprise. History of art and history of religion are not well taught. Islam has become a political and demagogic tool, an ideological resource in the populist culture promoting political legitimacy. In everyday life, the shift explains the ubiquity of plastic objects and the imitation of Western standards by elites. This shift is even obvious in architecture with the rise of modern buildings, Californian villas, and cheap housing. Fabre (2009: 18) tries to explain why "habits erode perception" in heritage recognition. In his view, heritagisation doesn’t lead to the awareness of living in a heritage because it only adds one repertoire of spatial actions and one regime of time without erasing the former ones. Moroccan inhabitant may simply not take these new repertoires and regimes into account. In that context of multiplicity, he lists several ways to live in heritage. The first is " assimilation " (familiarisation), that is to say living next to heritage, assimilating it in a mostly ritual use. In this mode, human beings travel across – which is different from visit – the heritage space, climb, represent, and write on it. For instance, numerous tags and children chalk drawings ornate the walls in the streets. The second manner is " occupation " (occupation), linked to the claims of property and of the first occupant. The third is " residence " (staying, residence), which implies most of the time a functional conversion of the heritage. Residence is by far the most common way of living in heritage in the Fez medina. This way didn’t imply any functional conversion because houses have always been places to dwell in. Inhabitants already lived in "heritage" in a residential and ritual way before its institutional nomination. There was then no need to find a new use to preserve a dying heritage, to think about a way to inhabit heritage. Frederica said that "people do not speak in terms of heritage, because you
178 cannot live in a museum! When I'm in my house, I do not say every day 'Oh, look at this zelij [i.e. mosaic]!' No, I live there. I dirty the zelij , sometimes I spill coffee on it. But it is my life, I cannot... I have to defecate in heritage [laugh]." In Fabre’s (id.) view, Moroccans inhabitants are too "close " to the site. Fez is for them banal and familiar. This is an intimate space, a space of everyday experience. Objects are tested through their sustainability and accountability and are considered like individuals (they are allocated a soul for instance). Their use gives them a effective and practical value rather than a heritage value. Also, there are few opportunities for Moroccan inhabitants to compare Fez to other places. Their attachment to houses doesn't consist in sharing emotions about a loss but in taking position according to local policies about their environment. Barthelemy and Weber (1989) also show that when individuals are living in an environment, they first worry about their use of this environment and they would be opposed to whatever change to their uses. In the Fez medina, the heritage relation with houses is secondary because inhabitants do not automatically and permanently consider their house as a piece of cultural heritage but rather as a place to live. This statement is not tantamount to saying that inhabitants do not take care of their house. Herzfeld (1991: 4) describes that before being monuments, houses in Rethmenos were "the familial context of a social life that is full of affection, distrust, loyalty, hatred, amused tolerance, fierce exclusion." Although owners complain about the fact that houses are small, uncomfortable, unhealthy and cramped, they developed an affective stance toward their house. Each of these theoretical approaches explains why inhabitants do not care about houses and heritage, but asserts a total dichotomy between blindness and awareness. Either inhabitants are blind and familiar to their heritage, or they are aware of it and undertake preservation actions. Also, denying a heritage skill to Moroccans is denying the fact that a same object can be involved in two relations at the same time (the house-as-a-home and the house-as-a-heritage), or is reducing one object to only one of its attributes (to be a home or to be a heritage). The theory of affordances is a first stage to overcome the dichotomy. According to Gibson (1977), human beings perceive value rich ecological objects, that is to say that they do not perceive qualities but affordances according to their needs. "What the object affords us is what we normally pay attention to" (Gibson, id.: 134). Objects, but in fact any component of a situation, offer holds, that is to say affordances, unrealised potentials, tangible or intangible grips that instigate certain actions. Holds constitute a meeting point between the characteristics of the object and the resources of the other components in relation with it. Keane (1997) shares the same ideas when speaking of a bundle to describe the plurality of features of objects whose only few are effectively used in situ . Affordances invite individuals to pay different kinds of attention to objects. For instance, a house is a dwelling, a person, a heritage, a
179 money provider but it is not all those qualities at once and for all individuals. In the next section, I focus on how human actors are successively blind and aware according to the attention they give to an objet. I also describe and explain how human actors come to qualify a house as heritage. Before, I describe two Moroccan initiatives against the blindness to heritage. Two students of the High Studies in Management in Fez organised a free event in the context of their studies. They chose the topic "Safeguarding and promoting the cultural and architectural heritage of the Fez medina. The Millenary Fez, a return to the future" 106 and they organised a "heritage day" on the 22 nd of April 2012 at the Batha Museum. More than 500 people attended the conference, fashion show and music concert. The conference was entitled "Protecting and enhancing the architectural heritage of the city of Fez." ADER director Fouad Serghini was among the speakers. Also, a photography competition and exhibition was organised in collaboration with the ALIF ALC photography club with the theme "Moroccan Architecture." More than 80 people participated in the contest. The two students decided to create this event because, according to one of them, "over the last few years, this richness has been deteriorating because of our lack of citizenship and awareness. That's why we have to react before it disappears, and that's why we decided to realise this project to promote this jewel and raise the lost awareness among our citizens." Also, "as nobody cares about the medina deterioration, an awareness campaign is necessary for the revitalisation of this vanishing pearl. This awareness campaign could provoke a guilty feeling and a consequent responsibility of all those affected by the future of the medina." In their idea, everybody – architects, doctors, urban planners, property developers and lawyer – is concerned with "saving our dear medina." In the same vein, Tayyibi, the former director of the National School of Architecture in Fez, decided to hold a heritage day on Facebook on the 18 th April 2011 between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.. I was in charge of managing and fuelling the discussion with Meriem and himself. He created a specific Facebook page with topics for participants – mainly people involved in architecture such as students and architects – to meet and discuss heritage in Morocco. On that page, he explained the reason of this event. "There is a rich and wide built heritage in Morocco. This heritage shows the ethnic and cultural mix that participated to the birth of local traditions and specific building cultures in terms of materials used and building techniques well suited to the life conditions. Heritage in Morocco is a wealth in all the meanings of the term. It is often unique, mainly when related to historical centres and fortified villages of the South that show the genius of builders. This heritage of building culture is exceptional. It is also important to remember that Moroccans experience a crisis, mainly a crisis within the institutions in charge of public action and inequalities reduction.
106 Cf. appendix p. 386 for the leaftlet.
180 The management of heritage and of building projects with local materials faces a deep problem hindering any opportunity of economic or social development for the built fabric in particular and for the territory in a general way. This problem is even more tragic if we consider the narrow meaning given to the concepts of management and heritage. It is not sufficient to advise and to observe to give sufficient results. […] Conservation, promotion and restoration issues are important and they involve professionals and skills. It is necessary today to promote these resources. Education and awareness rising are unavoidable tools to this end." In doing so, Tayyibi aimed to make of the ENA a place to think and raise awareness about and around heritage. The discussion addressed several topics. Among them were the definition of built heritage and the criteria of its nomination and the comparison with France and Algeria in terms of institutions of preservation and State allocation for heritage preservation. Participants referred to official writings – Cahiers techniques SIA Zurich about the conservation value or the lists of historical monuments and the list of actions undertaken by the Ministry of Culture – or scholars and professionals – the link of a teacher blog describing heritage, Monique Eleb and Cohen, André Adam, Mohammed Sijelmassi – to support their argument. Participants criticised the lack of a strong and sustainable policy and strategy followed by concrete actions in a multidisciplinary atmosphere. Some actions, like the Aga Khan Award for architecture in a Moroccan village (Aït Iktel) were mentioned for being successful because professionals and publics authorities worked together. They also criticised the too few actions undertaken by public institutions, too few categories of heritage, too many listed monuments in decay. They attributed this state of decay to the major social and economic changes that followed the end of colonisation and the development of modern economy. Morocco has chosen a path neglecting its past. Finally, participants shared links about Fez, heritage, the association CasaMémoire , the use of earth in architecture, the collective mills. They posted videos and texts of Andre Ravereau and Hassan Fathy, the article of Babadzan about social uses of heritage, the book edited by Caroline Gautier Kurhan about Moroccan cultural heritage. A student raised the idea of creating an association aiming at organising events to raise the awareness of Civil society about heritage, at involving students in restoration projects during their school training.
181 4.7. Conclusion
In this section, I took houses of the medina and their materiality as a departure point to follow several networks meeting in these houses, to describe various ways to engage with houses and their material components. These houses are more complex in their materiality and in their daily life than scholars and novelists (re)present in their books. The Islamic City paradigm and the unique model of patio houses are inscribed in the "building perspective," according to which production and construction only transcribe pre existent and ideal forms into a material substrate (Ingold, 2011). I added a "dwelling perspective," an alternative account on building that rather focuses on the process of working with materials and engaging with the environment. This engagement with materials is evident when inhabitants undertake construction works. Construction works are a first way to engage with houses. Inhabitants undertake works according to their economic means – many informants underlined the expensive price of traditional materials – and their project with the house. Some simply maintain the house by repainting the walls and improving the waterproofing. Others improve it with modern comfort by adding a fridge, modern tiles, or air conditioners. Others undertake major works when they intend to open a tourist accommodation or to upgrade the house to the latest comfort standards. Informants favour the respect of the house, oldness and tradition. But in any case heritage is their concern. Another network of engagement brings members of institutions and their rules in houses. To undertake works, inhabitants have to ask for one or several permits, depending on their project. Members of various institutions compose the three commissions in charge of issuing permits and controlling the works with regards to their rules – the Master Plan, the national heritage laws, the Charter of Guest Houses. Heritage then rests at the heart of specific institutions, such as the Inspection of Historical Monuments, while others, the National Security among them, do not especially care about it. Also, inhabitants have to face these various institutions, to pay money to obtain what they want, and to play with their rules. In this game, both inhabitants and members of institutions implement ruses and tricks in order to be "normally illegal." For instance, Moroccan inhabitants, whatever the rules are, give importance to cleanliness and tidiness and favour their comfort to what is legal, while foreigners favour the harmony of the site they have chose to live in, sometimes in detriment of the rules. Inhabitants firstly care about the problems they face during the construction works, and learning "how to do" is at the core of their experience. Undertaking works in a house is both a learning and a human experience in which heritage is a secondary concern. Informants faced another kind of relation with houses when furnishing and decorating it. They defined styles of furnishing and decorating, guidelines they followed to furnish their house,
182 and judgements about other kinds of furnishing in the medina according to specific criteria. In these categorisations, prescriptions and evaluations. The accusation of "kitsch" or Orientalism are better understood in terms of an "epistemology of presupposition" (Bizzochi, in Fabre, 2009) than in terms of a "staged authenticity" (MacCannell, 1973), a folklorisation (Kurzac Souali, 2007), or a Disneylandisation (Chebbak, 2004), for the first give place to the inhabitants' tastes. Taste appears to be an affective and aesthetic relation with the house and its furnishing, a skill inhabitants can learn, a judgment made according to specific criteria such as originality, continuity, harmony or beauty. But one more time, heritage was hardly evoked. A focus on houses used as tourist accommodations allowed me to investigate the relation between inhabitants and three qualities of North African houses taken for granted – intimacy, hospitality and tradition – as this use exacerbates the concerns with these three notions. Owners care about their intimacy and privacy when they have to share the house with other inhabitants, and they implement strategies and practices to appropriate their house and to feel at home. For instance, they define rules, they select their guests or they move to a private house. In tourist accommodations, owners also have to balance a friendly relation with an economic one in order to be hospitable, as this hospitality has become a commercial behaviour. The most obvious changes occurred in the way informants define traditional houses and tourist accommodations. They link tradition with several criteria – the structure of the house, its materials, the way of living or a specific period – the place – Fassi tradition – and fake – to criticise modernity – but hardly with heritage. Heritage was not more obvious when informants spoke about what the house allows them to do. Informants allocate agency to their house. This latter allows them to travel, improving their skills, practising artistic or intellectual works, expressing their imagination and creativity. They also sometimes consider their house as a living entity having its own soul and energy. This focus on a more material aspect of the house doesn't bring more light, or more opportunity for heritage to appear. Heritage really appears when Moroccan elites, members of institutions and foreigners deny Moroccan inhabitants to take care of their house and to have heritage skills. They, as well as Moroccan inhabitants themselves, give several explanations to this blindness to heritage, to this lack of interest in history and in preservation works undertook by public authorities. Among these explanations are the poverty of inhabitants and the fact they are mainly tenants and not owners, their main concern with security and daily life, the lack of "heritage preservation culture," the lack of education and knowledge, the absence of civil society. In that context, they saw the presence of foreigners and tourism a key terms in the current rise of heritage awareness in Morocco. However, in their statements and explanations, inhabitants and members of institutions generally mixed
183 houses and heritage and called houses to speak of heritage or the way reverse.
These 5 kinds of engagement with the materiality of houses show distinctions between categories of human actors. Moroccans, foreigners, members of institutions, tourist accommodation owners, differ in the location of their house, their taste, their respect of the rules and the qualification of houses as heritage. It however doesn’t mean that heritage comes from a bourgeois appraisal of houses. I do not deny that the qualification of houses as heritage is more than often met among Moroccan elites and foreigners who do not use houses as dwellings anymore. I nonetheless argue in the next section that this difference in the heritagisation of houses is less a matter of social class 107 than a matter of distance: not a social or professional distance but a distance in practice and attention getting – Moroccan inhabitants barely define their house as heritage but generally agree on the heritage quality of buildings they do not often use such as the Moulay Idriss shrine in fez or the Tower Hassan II in Rabat. Secondly, heritage is relatively absent from these descriptions. It means that houses allow another story than heritage. They have multiple stories and heritage is one of them. Houses are also a mix of materials – bricks, wood, plaster – rather than as materials agents. As such, they offer (or make available) their properties (or affordances) to human beings experiencing them. During this experience, human being may come to qualify these properties, making them qualities. 108 I address this process of qualification with the following questions: where does heritage start? When and how do inhabitants come to qualify a house as heritage? Leaving aside the question "are houses heritage?" I raise the issue of how houses become "heritage." In other words, the next section is dedicated to the heritage border.
107 In a similar vein, Berque (2010) follows a bourdieusian path to explain the birth of landscape. In his view, only urban dwellers can "see" landscapes because, beyond necessity and use, they aesthetically contemplate their environment. This contemplation – both admiration and meditation – comes from a distance from this environement that is not anymore a place to work but a place to enjoy. It also requires the ability to taste the sensitive happenings and things in order to give them value. 108 The difference between properties and qualities is a heuristic one. Rather than a border separating them, there is a continuum between them. None is more objective or more subjective, more essential or secondary. In a rought, properties are all the affordances offered by a thing, while qualities are those human beings give attention to during a specific action. As such, properties and qualities both depends on the experience of this thing. Qualification is not a matter of affixing some meaning to something but of discovering it in the very process of use.
184 5. How to be attached to houses?
5.1. Introduction
In the previous section, I focused on the relation between existing things. I investigated the encounter of networks in medina houses. In this part, I put an emphasis on the various ways to develop a relation with medina houses beyond their materiality. I investigate how heritage elements come to exist, how houses may become cultural heritage. Gravari Barbas (2005) and Fabre (2009) explore heritage places even if inhabitants don't consider them as such. However, I'm interested in the way human actors may come to qualify a house as heritage, since the official heritagisation doesn't mean that everyone recognises the listed element as heritage. I review five ways of investigating the relation with medina houses, namely physical senses, affects, qualification, conflicts and justifications, and the expert and non expert approach. In each chapter, I question a specific theoretical issue. I address the matter of sensual perception as a skill, as Ingold (2001) and Hennion (2007) argue. In the third chapter, I draw a typology of affects and I challenge Etienne's (2006) dichotomy between socio biographical and aesthetic historical affects. In the following chapter, I consider the classical divide between experts and non experts in their appraisal of houses by adding the category of autodidact experts – or amateurs – and by stressing the similarities shared by these three categories. The identification of conflicts surrounding the house emphasises the values given to houses and gives a glimpse into what people care for. I however argue that conflicts do not constitute the main types of relation with houses. They rather constitute a tool for the researcher and are not a fundamental characteristic of his/her object of investigation. Finally, by investigating the qualities allocated to houses, I ask how and when the quality of heritage is allocated to houses and I question the notion of heritage border.
185 5.2. Sensual 109 relations with houses
Based on the description of various senses that informants mentioned in their physical relation with houses in the medina , I question the idea of senses as skills. Many scholars stress the importance of sensing things and present senses as skills. Ingold (2001) argues that both art and technology got rid of the senses and bodily skills. They then missed the coordinated engagement of bodies and tools in the perception through the senses and the actions on materials in a specific environment. Ingold (2000) then studies the engagement of human actors in the space through the foot and the practice of walking while Hennion (2007) argues that tasting is not an attribute or a property but an activity that needs the skills and reflexivity of tasters who give attention and the presence of objects.
5.2.1. Physical senses in Fez
I became interested in the physical senses during my fieldwork for my Master dissertation. I investigated, and participated to, a summer work camp in Fez where young people "from all over the world " – understand mainly from France and Morocco – helped ADER workers to restore
109 The anthropology of senses developed in the 1990s as one of the last "turn" in anthropology. This turn first instigated the hegemony of sight and erased the others senses. Studying architecture, Crunelle (2004) underlines volumes, materials, and colours – visual features – take the ascendance over odours in the description of houses. This bias comes from the idea that architecture is about buildings and drawing maps and plans of the visible. However, since the late 1990s, scholars of the sensorial turn (Howes, 1991; Classen, 1997; Stoller, 1997) stand against this hegemony of sight in the Western world in general and in social sciences in particular. They plead that the researcher takes account of his/her senses during the research, both when inquiring and writing (Herzfeld, 2001; Van Ede, 2009). They finally aim to go beyond a purely phenomenological approach of senses to study the mix of materiality, phenomenology and senses in situation (Goody, 2002). Ingold (2004) attempts to reintroduce a phenomenological stance by erasing the visual gap that separate objects and human beings as distinct and remote. As such, he mixes Gibson's (1979) ecological approach to visual perception (how is it possible to perceive things in the environment) with Merleau Ponty’s (1962) phenomenological approach of perception (what is the kind of involvement necessary for perceiving things in the environment?). In their many cultural readers (Bull and Back, 2003; Edwards and Bhaumik, 2005; Korsmeyer, 2005; Drobnick, 2006), scholars investigate the multiple ways to sense in and among cultures (Howes, 1991), the meaning that human beings give to the various senses, the social construction of senses (Vannini and al., 2012), different cultural sensory models or sensory ratio. They also avoid making of language the unique condition to sense something but they consider it as a tool that participates to the share and spread of senses. Candau (2000) for instance stresses the difficulty to put smells into words in a study dedicated to the expertise of odours in occupations such as chefs or forensic scientists. On the one hand, the limited vocabulary of smells facilitates their transmission and allows a mutual understanding between human beings. On the other hand, language is not enough to share odours. Latour (1985) on his hand studies the scientific way of seeing and the role of visual and scriptural techniques in the making and circulation of science. By anchoring their results in words, researchers make them visible and share them. However, few scholars focus on senses and heritage. Cultural workers and pedagogues on their hand really take account of experience and senses in the approach of heritage . They insist on the necessary physical contact with heritage as a tool for discovery. Heritage is a thematic for city guided tours, allowing people to visit elements of heritage usually forbidden. Also, French schools organise "heritage classes " included in their pedagogical plan. During one week, pupils and teacher spend time with heritage professionals and participate to their activity. For instance, they train to ceramic or stained glass making, or they wander in a natural park with a professional guide.
186 houses in the medina. These young people, and myself, experienced the first day of work with frustration. Building workers didn’t let us work with shovels to prepare mortars or axes to dig trenches, carry bags, or clash mortar on the walls. In a nutshell, they were concerned about our inability to work properly and fast. Moreover, they weren’t used to working with women – who composed half of the volunteers. After a few days of negotiations, discussions, and mutual observation, we started working and we immediately – in the evening and the day after – felt it in our body: blisters, scrapes, back and muscles pains, dust in the nose and the mouth. I later observed the workers had calluses on their hands. Some of the oldest ones even had their fingers blocked in a hook like position. I also noticed the smells of mortars and stripping chemicals, the taste of dusty water and the sound of shovels on the ground. All these senses intensified and marked work colleagues’ and my own experience of working in houses. During my second fieldwork, for my Ph. D. dissertation, few informants mentioned the mobilisation of their senses during the construction and maintenance works – due partly to the fact that many foreigners didn’t participate to the works. However, senses are part of the daily relation with houses. Hassan touched the mortars to check their dampness when we entered the ablution room of the Bouanania medersa (i.e. Koranic school), Abdelhay mentioned he could spend hours in the patio to look at the decoration, Gigi said she tried to read and understand the symbols in the patio of her guest house, Fettah underlined the importance of observing master craftsmen at work, David spotted the details of any house he entered and stripped it bare with his eyes . Also, Moroccan women told me about the physical pain and the difficulty they had to clean the house, which was too big and too old for them and their family. In Jawad's house, Amina often helped her mother Ftouma clean the house.
Among all the senses, informants most often cited sight. As Philippe, a French art historian, said, "[s]ight takes precedence when you enter a house. You are dazzled. There are a lot of things to see. I would say that you need to stay some time in a house. Don't go through it too quickly. That's why I really like drinking tea with the owners, to have the time to see the house." When entering a house, foreigners, be they residents or tourists, declared they were stuck by the architectural decorations in the central courtyard. They sometimes associated this "unveiling" of the interior of a house with a physical feeling of being breath taken and speechless in front of what is beautiful or what was beautiful before its current state of decay. Abdelhay spent hours in the patio looking at the architectural decoration that is "very simple but has an extraordinary effect" because of their Arab meanings. The patterns of this decoration "inspire me Arab Andalus depth. Because you know, you can find the same patterns in this house in mosques and in the Alhambra in Andalusia."
187 Many informants – mainly foreigners – mentioned "love at first sight" for the house when they were looking to buy a property. Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, remembered that he "saw a house that hit my eye and I loved it." When I asked her to explain how she came to buy her house, Evelyne, a French guest house owner, recalled: "[w]hen I entered into the house, it was love at first sight. Really, I found the house beautiful. I found it wonderful. […] It was unbelievable. I found it grandiose. I entered the patio, I saw those sculptures, those gabs [i.e. carved and/or painted plaster] on the wall... I don't know. I had the feeling of entering.... In fact, I had never seen anything so beautiful. I had sailed in the medina, wI had visited museums and so on. But I didn't expect to see such a beautiful house. […] I had also visited small ryads, but they were in decay, with a lot of fallen rocks. They were not beautiful. But when I entered this one, I felt good. Suddenly, right away. You cannot know why, I don't know. I think it is the irrational side of love at first sight." Loïc, a French guest house owner, underlined the difficulty of putting what he saw into words. "At first sight, one may see the difference in style [between houses]. But to talk about it is another matter." Gigi exemplified the difficulty of seeing what others see. She usually presents the patio to her guests. She explains the symbolism of the architectural decoration and she shows patterns and drawings with the help of a red laser pointer (cf. appendix p. 387 for a visit). Tourists then comment: "Ah yes, I see it," or "how have you discovered all of this, it is not blindingly obvious," or "I don't see anything!" Also, some joke about what is sometimes "far fetched": "Ah there, a plane!" or "Look at Darth Vader over there!" The look on the house changes with time. When Loïc arrived in January 2010, he focused on general things. "When you take the first tour, and in the beginning, you see things globally. You perceive the atmosphere. You are receptive to the atmosphere, to the decoration. With time, you see things in detail, and you become aware of the material aspect of things. You see the lamp, but when you come closer, you notice it is chipped. So, it is the process I'm living now: I observe things in a more and more detailed way." More than a simple look at the house, sight is correlated to affects – love, well being – and qualities of the house – light, beauty. Informants mainly associated the patio – its luminosity, its greenery, its decoration – and the rooftop terrace – its panoramic view – with sight. Among other qualities, many foreigners evoked the excessive ( "too much ") aspect of Moroccan architectural decoration. Kate, an American guest house owner, explained that she "left the walls blank. You do need a place for your eyes to go to, but simple, clean, white. That's a challenge of putting furnishing in a house like this, with all that zelij [i.e. mosaic ]. I put comfortable furnishing that so eye catching at once, let this architecture speak to the house, and use the furnishing as a way to fasten the edges. Everything is very symmetric, and there are no curves, there are no soft edges."
188 Some informants also associated sight with blindness or knowledge. According to Omar, a Moroccan guest house employee, "[t]o look at something comes from two things. Curiosity first: how was it made? How many clients asked me about the painted plate on the wood ceiling: is the plate made first, or do they [i.e. carpenters] stick it after? That’s curiosity. And then, there is interest. To some people, my wife for instance, a LCD screen doesn't mean anything. But it means a lot to me! So, you look at something with two eyes. The first looks at with curiosity, the second, with interest." Michel, a French resident, put to the fore his skill to visualise. "I'm quite lucky. I studied architecture and drawing, even if I'm a pretty bad drawer. I'm also a sculptor used to working in 3D. So, I can visualise instantaneously in 3D. I can see the potentials and what I want it to become." Benoit, a French guest house owner, for his part removed all the zelij (i.e. mosaic) from his house, even if "[a]ccording to him [i.e. David], I had wonderful zelij on the floor, pure marvels. They were in absolute shambles. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see it was wonderful zelij ."
Informants also put emphasis on sounds. They generally mentioned the sound of the water in the fountain, or the remote call to prayer. They asserted they felt at peace in the house, as if they were protected from external noises, as if the house provided only peaceful sounds. They opposed the silent house to the noisy medina. A bad soundproofing constituted an exception. Jawad underlined he could often hear what happened or what was said in the nearby house because of the open rooftop and the bad soundproofing of walls. Similarly, informants gave importance to sounds in the medina. In the early 20 th century, Burckhardt (1992: 7) wrote, "[e]qually unmistakable are the sounds. I could find my way blindfold by the clatter of hooves on the steep paving; by the monotonous cry of the beggars who squat in the dead corners of the streets; and by the silvery sound of the little bells, with which the water carriers announce their presence when, wending their way through the sūqs [i.e. markets], they offer water to the thirsty." In a house, the noise intensity varies according to the moment of the day. In guest houses, the usual "line of noise" starts in the early morning – before 8 a.m. Only birds, voices of employees preparing the breakfast in the kitchen and the prayer call interfere with the silence. At about 8 a.m., the first tourists start talking in the patio while having breakfast. The height of noise level occurs during breakfast, while from 10.30 a.m. to 4 p.m., the house is quiet again. Only the employees cleaning the rooms and preparing dinner make noise by talking and washing. For instance, cleaning ladies sometimes sing while working. Others do not hesitate to talk or to tell jokes. In the evening, during dinner, noise is not as clear as in the morning. Guests speak in a more muffled way, in order to not disturb the neighbouring table. Ruth , mentioned "the call of the house" to explain the reason she bought this house. "In the
189 beginning, it [i.e. the house] bewitched me. It told me 'Buy me, save me. It is me!'" She later added in the discussion that "[w]hen I saw this house, I said 'Wow.' I entered, and I felt strange. In my head, I couldn't realise I was about to buy this house. The house was empty, but I heard children’s laughter that filled the house. It was a joyful house."
Informants hardly evoked the senses of touch, smell and taste. Taste most of the time relates to the claim that home made food is better than in any restaurant, be it tourist accommodation owners lauding their cuisine or Moroccans explaining why they never go to the restaurant. Michel Possompès, a French architect, was an exception. He sent me some of his writings after his stay in the medina in April 2011. "Afterwards, all my senses imbued by the Medina, my own flesh printed, I felt sensations in my palate, like an after taste, a flavour that remains." More often than talking about taste, Moroccan informants recalled the cedar or sandalwood scent weekly burnt in houses in the past. Others mentioned the smell of food being cooked in the kitchen, for instance the smell of bulfaf (i.e. liver brochette whose pieces of meat are rolled into a fat membrane and dipped into cumin and salt) during the ‘aïd el Kebir (i.e. Feast of Sacrifice). Guest house owners evoked the difficulty to avoid bad smells when the drains drove smells back. Smells were more evident in the medina. Burckhardt (1992: 7) writes that "[n]othing stirs the memory more than smells; nothing so effectively brings back the past. Here indeed was Fez: the scent of cedar wood and fresh olives, the dry, dusty smell of heaped up corn, the pungent smell of freshly tanned leather, and finally, in the Sūq al 'Attārīn [i.e. Attarine market], the medley of all the perfumes of the Orient." Berrada (2000: 208, my translation) describes the surroundings of the Moulay Idriss mausoleum as a place "astonishing for its commercial diversity. The object of cult is confused with the pleasure of senses. Musk, incense, rose water, orange blossom water, and other voluptuous scents mix with herbs whose steams are supposed to calm jnun [i.e. genies ], such as thymus, geranium, camomile or coriander seeds." Some tourists evoked the bad smell of the tanneries and their surroundings during the summer. Shopkeepers in the main street quickly washed the soil when a mule or a donkey had defecated on the way. Shortly after I left in the summer 2009, garbage collectors went on a strike for almost two weeks and many informants mailed me about the stench in the medina, substantiated with pictures. Jawad mentioned the sense of touch when talking about the coldness – in winter – and freshness – in summer – of zelij (i.e. mosaic). Following this idea, Rachid, a Moroccan architect, made a clear distinction between the tactile qualities of materials. "When you touch this [i.e. mosaic represented by the glass covering his desk], it is not the same as when you touch wood. There is a difference in the temperature. The tactile quality of zelij is very important." Loïc evoked the first
190 breakfasts on the terrace in spring when the skin is warmed by the sun. Touch may also be interior, as Philippe, a French art historian, explained. "I thought I had to soak up with the house, because it has a life in itself. One can feel the house is alive. And I felt I was impregnated with this by staying in the house, sat in a corner, looking and being touched by the house." Possompès, the French architect, also mentioned in his writings the walls he had touched while walking in the medina and the work of the hand in the construction of the city. "A human city as Titus Burckhardt qualifies it, with a human size, where the hand demonstrates ineffably its knowledge. The city was build with the hand; everything in the city is used with hands; everywhere in the city the hand, your hand, our hand, wants to touch, to skim, to caress, to follow, to rub, to rest on; finally, the hand exposes itself, expert like, in the street by performing to the delight of passers by." Finally, the tactile description of senses in a house sometimes turned into an outburst of senses. As I visited a building site with him, Antoine, the French manager of a building company, stopped in front of the plasterer working on a frieze around a door. "It is pure bliss. This work is very sensual in the way he holds the tool, the way he progresses along the frieze." He said he really admired the plasterer's work but would be unable to do the same because he was not "clever enough with my hands." When presenting his garden, and more generally Arab Andalus gardens, to tourists, Simon, a French guest house owner, described them as a "festival for the senses," for plants provide smells with flowers and trees, tastes with fruits and spices, colours with the flowers and the leafage and sounds of the wind in leafage or water in the fountain.
5.2.2. Sensual perception, skills and reflexivity
Aside from a link with the qualities and the atmosphere of a place, informants tended to consider sensual perception a skill, a competence. Omar considered sight as a skill one may learn, coming from curiosity and interest. Benoit admitted he didn't see the beauty of his mosaic. Tourists in Gigi's house managed to see the symbols hidden in the patio decoration. Antoine was not clever enough with his hands to make sensual plasterwork. Rachid evoked the distinction in the tactile qualities of materials. In the academic area, Ingold (2000, 2001) and Hennion (2007) make skills out of sensual perception in the sense of competences, the ability to give attention to things in a given environment while experiencing it. Skills then emerge from a specific coupling of sensual perceptions and movements of attention. This approach implies that some individuals are skilled to sense, while others are less so, according to the degree of attention they give to what they encounter through their movement in a given environment. However, if senses relates to attention giving and attention taking, informants usually didn’t give attention to their sensual environment except in case
191 of a rupture in their daily environment – with for instance guest house owners evoking the bad odours coming out of the drains. This sensual environment is "blindingly obvious. " I argue than in addition to being a matter of skill, sensual perception is a matter of reflexivity – what Hennion briefly mentions. If both Evelyne and Loïc stressed the sensual perceptions they had in their house, Loïc underlined the difficulty to put what he saw into words and Evelyne concluded to the impossibility of knowing what she had felt. Without reducing senses to language, the opportunity for individuals to share what they sense partakes in the sensual relation with their house (Candau, 2000). Also, aside from being rooted in the present experience, sensual perception provides a link with memory, as many informants evoked memories to talk of their sensual relation with the house or declared that senses summon memory. Ingold (id.) and Hennion (id.) mention memory and repetition in the learning of giving attention and in the acquisition of skills. Human actors become skilled with time and through repeated experiences. Finally, the skills in sensing the environment allow overtaking an approach of perception in terms of a mechanical and transitive relation with the environment. It includes movement into perception and sensing (Gibson, 1979) and proposes that human beings are in a productive engagement with their environment when giving attention and having sensitive experiences. "Perception is the achievement not of a mind in a body, but of the whole organism as it moves about in its environment" (Ingold, 2011: 11). If I singled out each sense, the body – and not one specific sense – perceives the environment. This sentient body at once produces and perceives the environment. Inhabitants in Fez most of the time mentioned their movement in the medina or in houses to evoke what they sensed except in the case of sitting in the patio to admire it. As such, what they perceive is not so much the house in itself but what the latter affords in the pursuit of their current activity.
192 5.3. Affective relations with houses
Away from the distinction between emotions and affects – a wide debate I do not claim to feed 110 – and between a psychological and a cognitive approach of emotions (Damasio, 1994), I consider affects as states of mind related to a connotation of pleasure or unhappiness, of appeal or repulsion toward an object, a situation, a human actor (Schore, 1994). Affects also correlate to memory (Leitchman and al., 1992). They serve to preserve the trace of past events, actions, encounters, and bring them into the present as potentials (Mazzarella, 2009). They may intervene in actions and decision making (Kals and al., 1999). "Any social project that is not imposed through force alone must be affective in order to be effective" (Mazzarella, id.: 298). Affects finally refer to the capacities to affect and to be affected, to engage and to be engaged with the object of affection (Navaro Yashin, 2009). In the following, I nonetheless respect the terminology used by scholars and write "emotion(s)" when they use this word. In France, several scholars work on "heritage emotions." Fabre (2002) takes emotion in its first meaning, that is to say a makeshift collective movement. Dassié (2006) stresses that action – to preserve elements of heritage – relates to emotions linked to both the destruction of an element and to personal history. Whitehouse (1996) also underlines the importance of traumatic and highly emotional ordeals in initiation cults that facilitate the printing in the mind of religious performances and practices. Barbe and Tornatore (2006) are more interested in the politicisation of heritage emotions, in the mobilisation based on an affective capital and in how to turn negative emotions into positive emotions for action. "Through a kind of politicisation of emotions, these heritage crystallisations, 111 drawing the edges of a community of affected, are instrumentalised in the
110 Anthropologists evoke the "affective turn " (Clough, 2007) or the "emotional turn" as an attempt to make room for affects in their discipline and to overtake main dichotomies in the study of affects, such as universal or specific, rational or irrational, in the nature or in the culture realm, the body and the mind (Wulf, 2009). This turn gave rise to numerous studies and a proliferation of terms and notions related to affects – passions, emotions, feeling, impressions. Rather than in the individual predispositions – be they biological, neurological or psychological – anthropologists usually explain affects by reference to the culture and they make of affects social and cultural constructions. Some, such as Turner, consider affects as universal features they may recognise from one culture to the other through empathy. Doing so, they dismiss language, for affects exist without any linguistic, social or cultural context. Scholars in the hermeneutic approach focus on the cultural meaning of affects and interpret them as cultural categories (Geertz, 1974 [1959] ; Rosaldo, 1980). They focus on the vocabulary of affects and on their performative side. As a consequence, they lose the feeling side of affects. Researchers in ecological anthropology for their part study the physical and natural environment and focus on the bodily and experiential aspect of affects. Milton (2002, 2009) investigates the "love for nature" and emotions and human ecology, Ingold (2000) examines the perception of the environment in everyday life. Several scholars study the spatial aspect of affects (Navaro Yashin, 2009; Smith and al., 2009; Thrift, 2009). Aside from affects as discourses, texts, or representations, they study the non or pre linguistic registers of experience. Finally, some scholars developed in the notion of "affective economy" or "economy of affects" focusing on the role of affects in building subjects (Ahmed, 2004) or on the role of affects in facilitating economic change (Richard and Rudnyckyj, 2009). 111 Trepos (2002) defines politicization and crystallisation as two fittings of collective expression. Politicization is the institutional expression of social practices, while crystallisation occurs when a non institutional group makes a social practice explicit. Politicization and crystallisation may oppose to each other, ignore each other or support each other.
193 construction of the cause " (Barbe and Tornatore, id.: 9, my translation). To investigate heritage emotions, these scholars take as a basis a disaster destroying or threatening a tangible element. However, there is no pending threat in Fez. I base my description of affects on the daily life in medina houses. I had access to these affects through what informants told me about what they felt or feel in their house. My approach of affects is therefore mainly discursive. 112
5.3.1. Affects in Fez
I mentioned that "love at first sight" mixes physical reactions, qualities of the house, and affects. Some informants particularly stressed the affective side of this initial shock. Benoit evoked his feeling of excitement. "I don't know how to say. It is stupid, but when I went to buy the alcantara, 113 and I saw this purple alcantara, I can swear I was in such a state! I was out of breath, out of breath. And I know it is emotion." Others, as Evelyne, underlined having a good feeling with the house. Marie, a French tourist accommodation owner, declared she had "visited a lot of houses, in a lot a different neighbourhoods. In some houses, I think it is a matter of energy. I felt... Yes, I think houses diffuse energy. And in our house, I felt a positive energy, I felt people had been happy in this house." Also, many foreigners, as well as some Moroccan inhabitants such as Abdelhay, talked about the aesthetic subjugation they felt in their house. Fatima, a Moroccan architect owning a guest house, explained she developed a strong love relation with her house. "You know, we knew it [i.e. the house] when we were children," because she was living in a neighbouring house. When she was a young adult, her father wanted her to buy the house but it was too expensive. She eventually bought the house with her husband after her father died. Doing so, she had the feeling to have done what her father wanted her to do. Also "you give your best when you restore a house. So the house acquires a soul. The relation with this house is filled with love." Benoit evoked the humility and respect of living in an impressive architecture. "I think the architecture is so imposing that something happens. People respect something. People are maybe overwhelmed, but not in a wrong sense. I think that all what is beautiful in them goes out. They become completely societal again. They feel humble but they feel good. They feel impregnated with something beautiful." Simon, a French guest house owner, said that tourists who come for the first time in his house are impressed because "it humbles their pride." According to Mehdi, a Moroccan
112 I do not dismiss psychological or neurological approaches of affects, but I have neither the information nor the training to provide such analysis. 113 Artificial suede leather made of composite materials and used to cover surfaces.
194 inhabitant, traditional houses oblige you to "keep your feet on the ground" because the house is so huge and amazing, that one feels small and this precludes arrogance.
Informants also mentioned affects related to well being and peace, such as security, serenity and intimacy. Antoine declared that "[c]ompared to the very lively medina, in terms of activity and noise, I would say that when you enter into the house, you find tranquillity, you find a haven, a place where you want to settle with your bundle, to rest, to have warmth in winter and freshness in summer." Abdu, a Moroccan guest house owner, declared that each time he went to his house, "I sit in a corner and I forget myself. I forget myself until I look at the clock. I then notice that it is a bit late and that I have to go back home. I don't know how time passes there." Informants living outside the medina also evoked the well being they felt in medina houses and they described them like paradises and kingdoms of peace. Meriem, a Moroccan architect, said that entering a house, "is like a relief, you have the feeling of entering into a haven. […] I told you earlier people built those houses according to a principle, that is to say their house should be a paradise. It means that when I enter into a house, I should feel good and relax. The house should succeed in providing these feelings. And I think until now, they still manage to do so today." Informants usually associated well being to specific elements in their house. Loïc stressed the symmetric layout of the house. "With the arcades and pillars, I feel safe in the courtyard. " He added that this harmony "carries you into another world. You switch registers." Antoine mentioned the architectural decoration. According to him, women are more attracted by and feel better in his house than men, for his house was a chikhat 's 114 house. "Women entering this house are caught straight away. They feel good in this jewel because of the decoration. This is what most of them told me." In his view, women appreciate his house "[b]ecause it is tiny, because it is cute, because it is plentiful yet not overabundant. […] Here, there is not such much zelij [i.e. mosaic] but plenty of painted wood. Literally, to dress wooden structures with high quality and delicate paintings give them the appearance of lace. And women are sensitive to this." He also linked luminosity to affects . "In most houses, the sculpted wood closing the skylight gives a feeling of claustrophobia. These houses are very oppressive." Informants associated specific rooms with well being. Among them are the patio and the rooftop terrace because they are places to relax, to sleep, to refresh or to warm up. As Steve, an American tourist accommodation owner, said, the rooftop terrace is an open space in the enclosed medina. Ruth declared that the patio of her house was "wonderful" with its "amazing zelij [i.e. mosaic]" and the "astounding fountain." She nonetheless preferred the rooftop terrace where she
114 Nowadays, chikhats are known as professional singers. Nonetheless, as Newcomb (2010) put it, singing is not recognised as a profession for women in Morocco, and is often associated with prostitution.
195 found fresh air and a view. Loïc thought the patio was a key element for the well being of tourists because of its size, its decoration and its openness. As Gigi said, the patio is so "strong" that it is impossible to not feel anything there. Informants, mostly Moroccans, also mentioned the sound of the water running in the fountain and the greenery in the patio. One should add the bedroom in private houses. Some Moroccans elected their bedroom as their favorite. Omar favoured his bedroom because of the intimacy it provides. "I rather live in my bedroom than in the house. When I come back home, I go to my bedroom. It is my world." Also, the salon, when equipped with a chimney, was part of the favourite rooms for the atmosphere it generates during wintertime. It is a place to meet people and to warm oneself up after a long day in the medina. However, the architectural features of the house may also stir bad feeling. For instance, French resident Sarah said that when she entered into some "medina HLM [i.e. high houses with many windows in the patio], I feel dizziness from all the openings alone! At some point, I have to go out."
Many foreigners remembered their sadness and anger because they spent more time, more money and more energy than expected on construction works. Olivier, a Belgian resident, asserted that after the restoration experience, he felt "[s]adness. But above all frustration. Frustration because of waiting and a lack of accomplishment. The first year, I was motivated and crazy. […] But today, I’m broken; I'm tired in spite of my age and my experience in managing projects." Ruth remembered of the construction works like "bad moments. […] The house made me suffer a lot. There is a lot of my suffering inside. It was 2.5 years of nightmare." Yet even though her affects for her house "are not really cheerful, I really love this house. I put my heart and my soul inside. And it is a wonderful house." Others mentioned crying in their house. During the interview, Emma, an Australian tourist accommodation owner, cried several times when evoking hard or joyful moments. The sentence " It is emotion, forgive me" punctuated her discourse. Evelyne declared that "I often say to the clients that I filled the swimming pool with my tears. Because I cried, I cried, I cried. I sometimes cried of despair." She carved the words salam (i.e. peace) and Hub (i.e. love) in the second patio of her house as an act of atonement. Kate experienced the tears of the former owners. "The mother in the family I bought the house from didn't want to sell, but the father did. When they gave me the keys, the woman cried, that was so awful. 'Please promise me, all my children were born in this house, my history is in that house, don't change it too much. Don't do anything crazy to it'." Fettah and David admitted their disappointment about their past involvement in the medina preservation. All the attempts of the former to create a space combining discourses about and
196 actions of preservation were thwarted from the inside because of financial and relational issues. The latter saw how Moroccans would not follow the movement and actions he implemented in the medina. Both attributed their failure to the fact that Moroccans, and more especially medina inhabitants, are not aware of their cultural heritage while they are more interested in short term benefits. Laïla, a Moroccan architect, showed more balanced in her affects for the medina. "I feel this emotional vibration as soon as I talk about the medina, an attachment that is not so rational. At the same time, I feel a kind of huge frustration because thousands of projects aborted and haven't been implemented. People live in intolerable living conditions. When it is raining, I'm in panic and I say 'Sure people are going to die because houses are going to collapse on them'." Some Moroccans spoke of their sadness and anger after a house had collapsed. They mourned human beings who had died or were homeless rather than the loss of a beautiful house. But more than houses, the medina concentrated their negative affects. They were angry because they felt public authorities did nothing to improve the medina while numerous works were undertaken in the New City. Facebook friends of the National School of Architecture Facebook page reacted with anger and rage to pictures Tayyibi 115 – the ENA director managing the page – had posted. One wrote the works in R'Cif square 116 were "[s]o ridiculous that it comes close to absurdity. Why the arcades? Why this gate in concrete there, with these shapes and ornaments? Each time, I feel distraught when faced with these 'defacements'." Others evoked their shame at seeing the medina in bad condition – "Yesterday, I was ashamed with a friend [to see rubbish around fountains]" – while others underlined the necessity of showing such "atrocities" for people to see and become aware of them. They also shared their pain – "I have a pain at my world heritage" – and they sometimes drew a parallel between the decay of houses and heritage and the decay of the human soul, the former reflecting the latter.
Moroccans 117 evoked nostalgia for the lost way of life in the medina, the bygone Golden Age of the city, the former supremacy of the Arab Andalus style and the Qaraouiyine mosque and university (cf. supra p. 46). In his novel, Berrada (2000: 76, my translation) describes the trip of a
115 As the Moroccan holder of UNESCO Chair "Network in earthen architecture, constructive cultures and sustainable development, his warhorse is the promotion of traditional architecture, and mainly earthen or natural architecture, as a solution for ecological and sustainable issues. 116 Construction of a new gate, a square and riverbank between 2009 and 2012. 117 Many Sephardic Jews and French were born in Fez but left after Independence in 1957. They nowadays live in France, Israel or Canada. To them, Fez and the medina are an opportunity to recall memories. On website forums, they share information related to historical reports and the medina current decay: the history of a hotel that should be demolished, the history of a church that is now a house, or the supposed restoration projects. In general, they are looking for former friends or family members, former names of streets, city maps, and pictures of the places they knew and attended (cinemas, swimming pools, schools, sweets shops). They also relate to how great, while hard, was their childhood in the city. The medina is mentioned in the souvenirs as a place where to eat donuts after a night of dancing in the new city, as a place of insecurity, or as a place of child day time expeditions.
197 Fassi in Andalusia in the 1970s. "I felt a mix of pride and despair when I understood that such a refinement could reach its peak only in such an environment [i.e. the Al Andalus Empire]. There are reasons to cry in front of such a wonderful piece of art disfigured and orphan of its mosque". For their part, most foreign inhabitants did not lament a vanished way of life, as for them, life in the medina, to a certain extent, is like inhabiting a medieval European city. Nonetheless, they mentioned the disappearance of houses as described in books and TV documentaries and depicted in Orientalist images and writings produced under the Protectorate period (1912 1956). They also evoked the past Golden Age of the medina as a time of opulence. Many Moroccan informants evoked memories – be they good or bad – related to houses. Meriem, a Moroccan architect, said that " [w] hen I go to my grand parents' house, I always remember. For me it is... This bedroom was my grand father's lay rahmou [i.e. polite expression when speaking of a dead]. There is a mark in each corner of this house. And maybe somebody else coming to my grand parents' wont have the same feeling because he doesn't have an idea of the life that once was there." Ahmed, a Moroccan guest house owner, remembered "[t]here was the lemon tree [in the patio] in which I climbed everyday. And the fountain was as high as I was. But it is over now." Ahmed also told me that his brother drowned in the central fountain. Others recalled the economic crisis of the 1980s, the deprivations, the eventual move to the New City or to a smaller house in the medina. Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, told me once how people were living in his family when he was young. "The Fassi way of inhabiting houses was and is not anymore. Nobody could afford to live like that. For instance, at home, we always had a maid, never with her husband but always with her children. […] We lived downstairs in the summer because it was cooler and upstairs in winter because it was warmer. Each of us had a bedroom. I never lived with my sisters. They were already married when I was a child. Maybe we lived together, but I do not remember. Also, it is certain I wasn't born when the gas bottle appeared. But I still hear my mother saying it had been a relief when they brought butane. But I remember the pressure cooker. I was born. It was also a relief for my mother. She could have time for herself, because before, she was busy with preparing food the entire day. Every morning, my father went out to the sūq in R'Cif [square]. There, men were waiting, sitting down. Those men were porters. We called them zerzaï . And each Fassi arriving at the souk had his porter. So the porter took the basket and followed the Fassi. They didn't even speak to each other. The father did shopping. The porter put it in the basket. And when it was finished, the father went to his work, and the porter brought the basket home. […] The father, when he came back home at noon, everybody was already sitting down at the table. And it was forbidden to talk while eating. Now, I allow my children to talk, because I didn't like it as a child. Maybe it wasn't
198 stupid, but it is different now. It must change. […] So, when the father was there, you had to be quiet. The father, when he was at home, you felt his presence. It is as if he was part of the architecture. He was never kind, and he never intervened. He ate, and afterwards took a nap. And most important, it was forbidden to speak during the news report. It was serious." Foreigners also spoke of their memories in their house. Amélie, a French guest house owner, declared that she had "a lot of memories of our beginnings with the children, of all this time with [her husband ], of Fez, of very happy moments." Kate even associated rooms to moments of her life. "I can walk into each room and I have memories of people and events that happened long before most of my friends were even here. So I can remember parties I had in 2004. The salon was the place I lived, and I had my TV and one bed where I slept, and my dining table. And then, I came to this suite, because it was the first we finished. And so I moved into each suite as we finished. […] I have memories like, when I met my husband, I was sleeping in this suite. But when he proposed to me, we were up in that suite. So my personal history is completely interwoven with the history of the house. And maybe that's why ownership is so important. If I were to sell the house, it would be difficult, because I would be selling 10, 12 years, from the age of 28, of my life. Everything happened here, or somehow is connected to here. I don't have a home somewhere else. Everything I own is here."
A last kind of affect is their absence. Marc, a French tourist accommodation owner, declared he was not attached to his house . "I do not attach myself to houses anymore. I think I was attached to the familial house by duty, and it was too heavy in the end. So, I do not get attached to houses anymore. When I'm in a house, I may feel good and restore it. But after, I have no difficulty getting rid of it". Several Moroccan inhabitants told having no affect for their house because they mainly considered it as an ordeal and a constraint that they wanted to get rid off to move to the New City. Members of institutions usually approached houses in terms of categories – ryad , dār , masriya – and rules to respect (cf. infra p. 203). However, despite the distance produced by categories, criteria and rules, members of institutions in Fez do have affects. Hassan described houses in a more affective way. Looking at the pictures of Dar Ba Mohammed Chergui [i.e. the house of a previous Basha 118 of Fez, Ba Mohamed Ben Chergui], he exclaimed, "it is an extraordinary house, which is finally very modest, sober. It is a place that deserves to be preserved as such. There is not a lot of decoration like in Dar Glaoui [i.e. the house, in Fez, of the eponym Basha of Marrakech], not so high. But it is in this simplicity that it represents hmm... These last days, I even worked on a project of listing it before they start the works." Moreover, Hassan was
118 City Governor.
199 nostalgic of the great days of UNESCO, when major restoration works took place in the 1970s and 1980s and when "everybody respected UNESCO." He was also upset in front of a house radically transformed by its owner who, for instance had destroyed the former architectural layout and decoration and had replaced them with features at odds with the medina. Lamya, an ADER technician, didn't hide her disappointment because she "visited houses I finished restoring with the 100% programme[of financial help]. A disaster. The walls, we had repainted them white one week or fifteen days earlier, they were black with grime. They do like that with their hands [she imitates somebody rubbing one's hands on the wall]. Cats everywhere, rubbish... We cleaned the whole house... Everything was very clean... But the most important aspect is security. Now, there is no more danger." Finally, some nostalgically mentioned their childhood in the medina and shared the discourse of ordinary Moroccan inhabitants about the past way of life. At the same time, they underlined that life was easier in the New City where they now live and that they wouldn't move back.
5.3.2. Heritage, affects and distinction
Numerous typologies may be drawn from this list of affects. A first typology takes account of the punctuality or the sustainability of affects. In this typology, only love at first sight is punctual, while well being, humility and respect, love, sadness and disappointment, loss and memories and absence of affects are sustainable. A second typology distinguishes affects related to feelings – love at first sight, well being, humility and respect, love and sadness and disappointment – and affects related to property – loss of what people had before, knowledge putting affects at distance, absence of affect. In the context of a third typology, love at first sight, well being, humility and respect as well as sadness and disappointment are "causal affects", that is to say they are caused "by" the object of affection – in this case, the house. Love, loss and memories and the absence of affects rather constitute affects "toward" the object of affection. Finally, a more refined typology simply qualifies the listed affect with a generic term. Love at first sight is an aesthetic affect produced by the beauty of the house, love for the house is an intimate affect, well being is a security affect, humility and respect relate to moral affects, sadness and disappointment are associated with negative affects, loss and memories are socio biographic affects when they relate to the personal history and they are historical affects when they relate to the history of the medina. The absence of affects belongs to professional affects with a concern for the past and rules . None of these typologies draw a clear distinction between categories of human actors. Taking the specific example of nostalgia, Berliner (2012) distinguishes endo nostalgia and exo
200 nostalgia. While the first is the "nostalgia for the past one has lived personally", as in the case of Moroccan inhabitants for instance, the second is the "nostalgia for the past not experienced personally" (Berliner, id.: 36). However, both foreigners and Moroccans evoked personal memories linked with their house . They referred to historical common grounds such as the heyday of Fez or the success of the Qaraouiyine university. The difference between foreigners and Moroccans lies in the willingness to talk about affects and in their availability in memory. For instance, affects are related to a rupture in the life of foreigners – they moved in a new country, they experienced construction works, they started a new life and a new job – and they are more "striking" in the memory. However, affects are rather inscribed in a continuum of Moroccans' life in the medina. Finally, it is difficult to assert which affects are heritage affects. Etienne (2006) aims to understand how an emotion may be a heritage emotion. According to him, the passage from the familiar and the intimate to the public allow the rise of heritage emotions. He distinguishes two typical categories of heritage emotions. Socio biographic emotions relate to familiar things and individuals tell their memories about them, inscribe them in their trajectories. These emotions, close to personalisation, participate to the rise of heritage emotions but they do not stand on the heritage side for they are still too personal and intimate. Aesthetic historical emotions include the object into a wider geographical scale and into a wider history. This process 119 of inclusion allows comparison with elements of heritage of the same kind. None of these categories of emotions relates to a specific category of human actors. One and the same person is located in a continuum between these two poles and may express the two kinds of emotions in the same discourse. I however assert that aesthetic historical emotions are not the only type of heritage emotions. Many informants who talked of aesthetic subjugation and showed nostalgia for the past way of life or what they evoked in their memories did not especially consider their house as heritage. I admit that comparison with other elements and the inscription in a wider historical context helps in qualifying something as heritage, as Etienne (id.) put it. However, it is rather a matter of knowledge than a matter of affect. According to their role in or their experience of the situation, human actors insist on one pole rather than the other. For instance, professionals of heritage, at first sight, take a distance from affects and put their knowledge – categories, rules, criteria – to the fore. This last remark nonetheless deserves to be questioned. Are professionals of heritage affects free, while inhabitants would be enclosed in their affects and lacking any knowledge?
119 The term "process" does not mean the way something stop being what they were to become something else, as Geertz (1971) suggests, but has to be understood as a realisation, a non exclusive establishment.
201 5.4. Experts 120 and non experts’ relations to houses
Similarly to members of institutions, Moroccan elites and foreigners deny any heritage skill to Moroccan inhabitants. Social science scholars for their part often oppose experts and non experts in their relation with objects 121 In their report about heritage in Morocco, Bouziane, El Maliki and Hakik (2010) reproduce the gap between experts and non experts by presenting on the one hand normative heritage (heritage in the Conventions) and on the other hand the social definition of heritage, that is to say the attitudes and perceptions of heritage among the Moroccan population. In this chapter, I question this expert and non expert relation to things. I aim to show this divide is irrelevant as long as expertise is considered as a profession or as a kind of knowledge. I first describe experts and non experts in their relations with houses and I then introduce the intermediary category of autodidact experts, or amateurs.
5.4.1. Experts, autodidact experts and non experts in Fez
5.4.1.1. Experts
I sketched out three kinds of experts 122 in Fez. The first intends to preserve the medina and to undertake construction works. They work as consultants for international institutions such as UNESCO or the World Bank (Bianca, Burckhardt, Lahbil Tagemouati), as academic scholars
120 In French, the word "expert" is both a noun meaning "somebody who has the function to formulate expertise" and an adjective meaning "able, skilled in a specific field or practice" (Roqueplo, 1997). In the following, as I will argue it, I choose the second meaning of the word. 121 Scholars have been interested in experts and expertise, which cover a wide range of attributes (skills, knowledge, abilities) and actions (tasks, activities, jobs, sports, games). Many of them take for granted that non experts have rather an affective relation with things – they act passionately – while experts have a knowledge relation with things based on objectivity and distance. Scholars in the cognitive and the psychological sciences try to sketch out the characteristics of experts and their performance in decision making or responsibility taking (Chi and Glaser, 1988). They consider expertise as a performance, a human attribute whose scholars study the processes and manifestations. Social scientists in the technical area focus on processes of innovation (Akrich, 1993), or the construction of expert systems that characterize modernity (Giddens, 1990). In the artistic field, scholars (Moulin, 1992; Hennion, 1993) investigate the role of experts in art making. To categorize an object as a piece of art is not enough because the public has to recognise and to welcome it as such. On the other hand, in their investigations of non expert, scholars focus on folk taxonomies (Atran, 1998), the native point of view in development projects, everyday language, and everyday life (Hall, 1993). Some scholars even try to cross the bridge by studying amateurs (Stebbins, 1992), passionate (Hennion, 1993), or the role of users in the diffusion of innovations (Akrich, 1998). In the heritage field, scholars study "heritage from below" (Roberston, 2012), "social heritage" (Rautenberg, 2003), "revivals" (Bromberger, Chevallier and Dosseto, 1999) or "cultural citizenship" (Albro, 2005). They show how local claims about heritage encounter official processes of heritage making and go along with them – with the creation of quality labels in the case of food revivals in France – or conflict with them – in case of misunderstanding or non recognition. 122 By expert, I mean any professional of heritage or architecture.
202 (Revault, Golvin, Amahan, Buob, Skalli), as members of the Inspection of Historical Monuments (Hassan, archaeologists and civil servants) or ADER, and as tourist guides. They usually don’t live in the medina for several reasons. Hassan declared that he wanted to buy a house in the medina but "I do not have the money to do so. Really, I cannot afford because of property prices. As a civil servant, I cannot afford buying a house." In another discussion, he added a matter of habit – he was used to having a car and to living in the New City – and of security. He "would maybe have had a problem with security, but not anymore. There is no problem with the built environment". In his daily practice of houses, Hassan referred to four categories. The ryad is a house with a garden, and, in Fez, most of them date back to the second half of the 19 th century. They reflect a horizontal evolution of building, and not a vertical one like in the dār . Diyour (sg. dār ) don’t have a garden but several floors to exploit a maximum of space. In those vertical houses, rooms were occupied according to the season – floors during the winter, ground floor during the summer to seek some freshness. The masriya is a small two floor house that wasn't autonomous but was attached to a bigger house. However, masriya now constitute houses in themselves, which is a big change. Finally, a ksar is a palace. Hassan also mentioned rules and criteria which had to be observed when undertaking works in a house or in any building in the medina. He wanted to avoid any radical changes that could threaten buildings and their transmission to future generations. Tourist guides approached houses in both their singularity – the history of a particular house – and their generality – categories of houses. During a tour, a guide presented the same four categories of houses as Hassan. He then asked in which kind of house they were – this question is sometimes tricky because houses are not always as complete as in their original display. At the same time, the guide told stories and anecdotes about a visited house or houses in general. For instance, there are sometimes two doorknockers, and the guide gave several explanations, without saying which one was the correct one. Either the upper one is for donkey riders and the bottom one for pedestrians, or one is for women and the other for men, or one is for foreigners to the house and the other is for relatives in order to know who is at the door, as the two knockers produce different sounds. Faouzi Skalli, a member of a leading Fassi family, used to live in the medina but he has moved to the New City at the time of my fieldwork and now shares his time between Morocco and France. As an anthropologist, he devoted his Ph. D. dissertation – published in 1994 – to Jesus in the Islamic mystic tradition and wrote a book, Saints et sanctuaires de Fès (2007). He is also an active member of the Boutchichiya Sufi brotherhood since the late 1970s. He initiated the Fez World Sacred Music Festival in 1991. Shaken by the Kuwait and Iraq conflict, he gathered ten filmmakers to present their work about different spiritual traditions. However, songs of Morocco's
203 religious brotherhoods, more than the films, which struck the public and the participants of this event. Every year since 1994, he has reproduced an international festival of sacred and spiritual music aiming at the promotion of intercultural dialogue through music and spirituality on the one hand, and at the enhancement of the socio economic dynamism in Fez on the other. Although Skalli does not take part in the restoration of the medina and its houses with the money earned through the festivals, he uses monuments as places of concerts and events. Finally, he created two associations – Fès Saïss and Esprit de Fès – in charge of organising these festivals (Culinary Festival, Andalus Music Festival, Sufi Culture Festival).
The members of institutions in charge of the medina and issuing permits – i.e. mainly architects and urban planners – compose the second category of experts. They usually do not live in the medina for the same reasons as the first category of experts. Architects have recently become essential actors. According to Gallotti (1926), this profession didn’t exist in the past. Architects arrived during the French Protectorate. They were either private architects or architects working for the Protectorate, such as Cadet and Brion. Nowadays, inhabitants have to hire an architect in the case of a V1 permit request (cf. supra p. 113). Jean Paul Ichter is a French architect and urban planner who arrived in Fez in the 1960s. He worked as the Inspector of urbanism there for 20 years. Among others, he participated in the drawing of the city’s Master Plan in the late 1970s and of the Tourism Regional Development Programme in 2004. In the medina, he supervised the restoration of the Riad al Bartal, the Palais Amani and Dar Adiyel. In 1975, he took part in the opening of R'Cif square and to the covering of the river Oued Jawahir – and then to the destruction of two hundred houses. Between 1979 and 1990, he was in charge of the association Fez Hadara. With some friends and the economic help of Jacques Chirac, he rented a famous palace, the Riad Mokri – nowadays the building of a school of craft – to make it a cultural centre where many concerts took place, and which was also a place to think about and practise restoration. Fettah later reproduced this idea. Finally, he was among the founders of ADER in 1989 and got involved several times in the organisation of the Fez Sacred Music Festival. Tayyibi, the former director of the Fez National School of Architecture, posts pictures on his Facebook page. His Facebook friends react by posting comments. Most of them are professionals or students in architecture or are involved in building works in Morocco. They give, or they ask, information about what the pictures are about. They also underline the role of the architect as an expert. Most of them include intellectuals in the restoration of heritage, which is a matter of skill and practice on the one hand, and books and knowledge on the other. "Architects change the shape
204 of the environment, but radical and deep changes result from the intellectuals and thinkers who draw attention on what should be improved. Other stakeholders may intervene in their own field after intellectuals raised their awareness: in politicians to establish laws, in architects, urban planners and landscape artists to improve the environment quality, in teachers to educate future generations, in economic investors to help the economy. And the list is to be continued."
Foreigners called in the context of a restoration project constitute the last kind of experts. During my fieldwork time, Catherine Rochant, a French architect, was in charge of the caravanserai programme of the Millenium Challenge Corporation project. Also, after the medina was listed as a World Heritage site, a lot of foreign experts came to Fez – Burckhart, Van de Kerkove, Michon, Bianca. Numerous scholars carried out investigations – Revault and Golvin in architecture, Anton Escher in geography, Justin McGuinness, Baptiste Buob and Frédéric Calmès in anthropology, Philippe in art history. Some of them bought a house in the medina but do not live in Fez the whole year round. Christophe Boulle is a French archaeologist trained in monumental archaeological heritage. He was a member – and after the director – of the Fondation de l' Œuvre Notre Dame. 123 He came twice to Fez for an exchange between Strasbourg and Fez, two twin cities. The exchange concerned craft and more particularly regulating lines. French and Moroccan craftsmen intended to compare the structure of mosaic and plaster carving in Fez with the fenestration and the gothic rosette in the cathedral of Strasbourg. He told me that he learnt more about affects than about techniques during his two stays. He also put emphasis on "the necessity to include the master craftsman. I worked during 7 years on the project of a 3D modelling of the Strasbourg cathedral. I gathered three specialists together: an architect specialised in computer graphics – he was the hand drawing –, an art historian and a sculptor master craftsman. There was also Roland Recht, a professor at the Collège de France, a leading expert in Rhineland art. He had written a book about the Strasbourg cathedral and the sculptures on its facade. In that book, he had done what any specialist does: a typology and an iconographic study of many statues and he had concluded with several assertions. During the project, the sculptor master craftsman however simply looked how the return of statues had been carved, with which tools and so on. Because workers didn't use the same tools in the 14 th and the 19 th centuries and, as a consequence, didn't leave the same traces. The sculptor master craftsman was able to identify them and to correct several of Recht’s assertions." Philippe is an art historian specialised in French art and he is the author of a discovery book about Morocco . He arrived in Fez in the mid 2000s to open a real estate agency – which doesn't
123 This foundation, created in 1246, aims to collect money in order to restore and preserve the Strasbourg cathedral and to organise the various professions involved in these works.
205 exist anymore – with two partners. Thanks to this job, he visited many houses and acquired a practical knowledge. Also, his professional training pushed him to read a lot about Fez. For instance, he declared he was good at dating houses. "Each time period had his type of house. Well, all of them have a central patio, with a minimum of one room around that patio for the smallest ones, but generally two to four rooms. And one floor. Builders kept that basic structure, they didn't create anything new. Over centuries, they reproduced the same kind of house, with some changes over time. Interior balconies for instance arrived in the 18 th century. They made balconies around the passageway to add more space in the rooms. It also allowed going from one room to the other without crossing all the rooms. […] You also recognise a house thanks to the plaster and the doors. The oldest plaster, well most of the time, it has disappeared. A very finely wrought plaster, plaster lace. So, as it was finely wrought, it was fragile, and it disappeared. The newest plasters are very crude, with flower patterns, and they are painted. […] The newer the plaster, the cruder it is."
In Fez, foreign and Moroccan experts want to protect houses without especially living in one of them. They think of houses in general terms – e.g. categories, definitions – and measurable and objective features – e.g. architectural features such as plaster. Knowledge is of prime importance to them and they sometimes link their occupation to a cultural engagement. They give voice to affects in public discourses to stir the expression of affects in their audience – by stressing the risk of disappearance and the urgent need to act for instance – or they talk about affects in their work .
5.4.1.2.Autodidact experts
The relationships of Gigi, Fettah and David with their house suggest that the opposition between experts and non experts is not relevant. One should add at least one category, that of autodidact experts, or amateurs. Autodidact experts have acquired and developed a specific knowledge about the medina, its history and preservation, as well as about houses and their architecture. Although this knowledge is not officially recognised, they present it to anybody willing to have information or some advice. Experience and time are the two key elements in their acquisition of knowledge. For instance, the Fez Riads’ website 124 informs that the manager of the agency, " [t] ravel writer, Lonely Planet author and resident Morocco expert, Helen Ranger, is in a perfect position to design a trip tailor-made for you. Helen has lived in Fez for almost eight years and has travelled extensively throughout Morocco during research trips for Lonely Planet as well as for magazine and blog articles."
124 http://www.fez riads.com/
206
I sketched three kinds of autodidact experts. Intellectuals active in the preservation of the medina, such as Fettah and David, constitute a first category. They took part in the creation of associations – Needa Fez as a place of discussion, Fez Riads as a renting agency. They implemented restoration projects – of houses, fountains, Koranic primary schools and walls. They facilitated house purchases by foreigners. David didn't present himself as an expert. In his view, he restored houses as a hobby and not as an occupation. When asking David when craftsmen started to paint plaster, he answered he was "not a expert in plaster" but that according to him, craftsmen have always painted plaster, as well as doors, with a relative stress on painting according to the fashion in currency at the time. Entering into a house with David is to open oneself to a detailed description of the house and its decorative patterns, in order to date the house and the changes brought later. He starts from the patio and goes to the open roof, comparing the house and its patterns with those he has already observed. For instance, when we visited his so called Imam's house, he showed me windows whose model was in Dar Batha. Also, he compared the house to a minaret when the patio shutters of the three floors are open. He was generally astonished when he saw something unique or for the first time. However, several foreign residents esteemed David as an expert, as a "purist of heritage" in the medina. As Amélie said, "David, the American, preserves authenticity. He didn't change too many things in his house, I think. I do not speak of the one he restores but the one he lives in. There, it is authenticity. He is looking after redoing things identically. It is unbelievable. He is in this spirit of authenticity. Me, I'm looking for an art of life. A little mix here or there doesn't shock me. But purists like David will tell you not to do so." Others criticised his expert’s status, saying that his knowledge was only bookish – that he has a charming and reassuring discourse but has never worked with his hands. Others accuse him of being a plunderer and of sending containers full of stolen goods to the USA. Guest house owners constitute the second kind of autodidact experts. They have developed a discourse about their house and present it to tourists. Gigi describes and deciphers her house through astrology, one of her passions. The house belongs to a Sufi, the symbolism of which she considered to have inherited. Anybody entering Gigi's house has to be ready for a 30 minutes presentation of the patio, its architectural decoration and its symbolism (cf. appendix p. 387). Amélie and her husband presented themselves as passionate collectors. They dedicated the ground floor of their private house to their two boys for them to play – and damage the plaster. But they devoted the first floor to their passion: a collection of Moroccan crafts. When they settled in Fez, they bought objects in second hand markets in order to decorate their house. They gave interest
207 to the objects’ (hi)story and not especially to their value. Amélie and her husband were eager to present objects of their collection because of their unique colours or shapes and to explain their origin. They even integrated odd objects. "This one is a bit strange, and we had to search what it was" declared the husband while manipulating the famous objet, a round tool to cook thin fritter leafs. Many Moroccan and foreign residents who knew them described their houses – both the private and the guest house – as a museum. The presentation of their house was at the core of a short movie shot in 2007. 125 In the kitchen, the husband said, "I took down three objects that were behind me. So, this one, probably all of you know it is a French butter mould. Then, in the same register, that is to say a wooden mould, you have this tool, which is Moroccan, for cakes [he imitates the use of this tool leaving a print on a cake]. And more interesting is this small object I bought from a Moroccan man who even didn't know what it was. It is a bread mark [he presses the object on his palm]. Because as you know here, breads are baked in public ovens, and to recognise theirs, people marked the bread. But it is quite difficult to find this kind of tool nowadays." Foreigners who manage a construction company in the medina compose the third kind of autodidact experts. Their expertise comes from their professional training – some are engineers – or their practice – they have restored several houses. Bonnie and her husband manage Medina Solutions . Bonnie graduated in architectural engineering. She arrived in Fez as a Fulbright 126 scholar in 2000. She carried out surveys about the Sbaiyin medersa (i.e. Koranic school) to try to launch a restoration project. After her Fulbright scholarship ended, she opened a construction company in order to make a living. Valentin and Valentin, two French airline pilots, who have been restoring their private houses, created Andalus Renovation in order to insure a job and a social security to their builder workers. However, this firm is much more a facade than a real firm. The Valentins are not eager to lend their workers, for they want to finish their houses first. Antoine first restored his private house and after a TV documentary dedicated to his experience in Fez, several foreign newcomers asked him for tips and advice. He slowly became a restoration work manager, having his own company – but being the only employee – and his own team of builder workers. He read books to learn more about houses. As a consequence, he was able to date a house from its decoration – the architectural style – and its location – the further from the centre, the newer. In spite of their differences, autodidact experts share similarities. Except managers of construction companies, they are not given any official status or recognition for their knowledge
125 http://youtu.be/HqcVrB90E4w 126 "The Fulbright Program is the flagship of international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries" (http://eca.state.gov/fulbright )
208 and practice. Sometimes, they even fight with official experts. For instance, Ichter and David disagreed on the way to undertake works in the medina and on the materials to use. Also, similarly to experts, autodidact experts have a network – of workers, official experts, shopkeepers and antique dealers – they share if needed and asked. Finally, they mention learning is at the core of their knowledge and practice. Contrary to experts, autodidact experts live in the medina.
I finish with an example of an autodidact experts’ initiative around heritage. In 2011, several guest house owners wanted to organise a tour for tourists to visit guest houses. The idea came from Loïc, who was already active in the cultural animation of the medina – he hosted concerts and exhibitions in his guest house. He had mentioned several times the existence of a tour allowing the visit of various craftsmen workshops in the city of Sète (France). For my part, I had from time to time asked owners – and Loïc among them – to bring tourists in their house for a visit. On that basis, we asked other guest house owners to participate to the organisation of an official tour. The idea was to open guest houses once or twice a month to show tourists this very rich "heritage that often remains hidden," as Loïc said. Other owners used this official tour as an excuse to send away those tourists who come randomly knocking on their doors, asking to have a look inside. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, was bothered with tourists asking to visit the house only out of curiosity. He had decided not "to open my door" anymore. Also, if he had to believe all the Moroccans who claimed that "they were born in this house, the house would had been a maternity hospital." Loïc wanted to make the tour educational, "to go beyond what lambda owners could tell about their house," without lapsing in an overly technical discourse. First, we asked volunteer owners to collect general information about houses, architecture, history and the medina, as well as anecdotes and stories about their house. We sent a form (cf. appendix p. 389) to owners, which they had to fill out. But Loïc quickly admitted he didn't have as much knowledge about his house, its history and its architecture, and that after one year in Fez, he was yet unable to provide accurate and precise information. He knew the house had changed since its building in the early 20 th century but he didn't know anything about these changes, except the very recent ones. Loïc and I then contacted several experts – architects, members of ADER, members of the Fondation Esprit de Fès – to provide the knowledge owners didn't have: on the one hand to help the owner learn about their house and fill out the form, and on the other hand, to provide an expert eye on the house and to reveal the unknown originality of some houses, such as a specific mark or a particular mosaic pattern. After several problems – how to prevent "awful" houses from applying and joining the
209 project, how to perpetuate the involvement of owners, how to make the tour official and legal – and petty arangements to satisfy everyone's desires, powers and sensibilities,127 after a year of work and meetings, we had our first tour. 128 Mainly French guest house owners took part in it. Out of the 8 houses, 2 were Moroccan owned, and 1 was British owned. All of them were official guest houses. During the first tour, tourists mainly asked when the house was build, who inhabited it, what kind of construction works had been undertaken, how long the owner had been in Fez, why they decided to open a guest house. During their talk, owners underlined the specificity of their house. Jean Marc's house was built in 1816 by a qadi (i.e. judge) and was not excessive in its decoration – a feature that tourists generally appreciated. Simon, a French guest house owner, put emphasis on the luminosity in his house because of the first floor bay window. This bay window was unusual in the medina – where houses are "traditionally closed" – and was due to the openness of the first owner – he was supposed to have travelled – and the absence of an opposite house from which neighbours could look inside his own. In addition to information about his or her house, each owner was expected to develop a topic related to a specificity of his house or to a main personal interest. Jean Marc chose the topic of food because, after being the residence of a qadi (i.e. judge), the house was a khli' 129 (i.e. dry meat) factory. Jean Marc was also an amateur of good food and his table was famous in the medina. Gigi proposed information about mosaic and their fabrication, patterns and colours, about fountains, about spiritual life – religious ceremonies, prayer – and about symbolism in the decoration. In Simon's house, tourists learnt about the Arab Andalus garden, as gardening is one of Simon’s passions. But neither in the talk about their house nor in the topic they developed did owners ever mention World Heritage and they hardly ever pronounced the word "heritage."
5.4.1.3. Non experts
Jawad and Abdlehay are among the 280,000 non experts living in the medina whose main concerns are having an easy access to this 300 hectare pedestrian area of narrow streets (to bring a fridge or a television in a house may turn into an adventure that may end with the devices’ entrance in the house through the open roof), having water and electricity supplies and feeling safe in the
127 Cf. appendix p. 391 for a better depiction of the nest of vipers. 128 I left the process in July 2011, because my time of fieldwork was over. The team of owners still had some meetings, and a first official tour occurred in December 2011. I had to opportunity to attend to two tours in June 2012, during a short stay in Fez. The final conditions for a tour are the following: visit of four guest houses (Maison Bleue, Riad Mabroucka, Riad Souafine and Dar Victoria) by a group of minimum 5 and maximum 15 tourists, each of them paying 80 Dh – 150 Dh for two (about 7.5 and 13.5 €) – for a four hour tour. 129 Khli' is a beef or dromedary meat cut in pieces, hung to dry in the sun, cooked with fat and spices and then preserved. It is typical of Fez, and usually served for breakfast with eggs.
210 streets. In short, they desire a comfortable house in a convenient medina. If they hardly gave dates of the medina’s history, Moroccan inhabitants posses a fair knowledge of its architecture. Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, explained that "houses built at the same period feature similarities. When the time period changes, the house changes. Something is added, something is changed in the house. For instance, close to Moulay Idriss, there is always a second floor and balconies with mucharabieh [i.e. lattice wood ]. When you go a bit higher [in the medina], there are no balconies anymore, and the windows are different. Here, in Batha [i.e. a neighbourhood close to the city walls], the characteristic is the blue and white zelij [i.e. mosaic]. There is no colour. […] It was like a trend at that period. But in the oldest houses, at the bottom of the medina, even in the patio, there are colours. I noticed it, because some family members live in the bottom [of the medina ], and I live in Batha." Foreign non experts put learning at the core of their experience. In addition to experience, they also learned from books and the Internet. Michel, a French resident, "browsed the internet in priority in order to reproduce a pure Merinid style in his house. The Merinid period wasn't a time of opulence but of morality. People spent their money differently [than in architectural decoration ]. Social values were different. Houses were sober, the Merinid style is sober, pure, uncluttered. There is no decoration. To me, the Revault and Golvin [i.e. book of architecture] was less useful than the Internet." Some foreigners even provided advices and information to newcomers. However, instead of talking in terms of expertise and knowledge, they mentioned personal talents. Michel for instance "has the eye" to see problems in a house, because his family was in the building sector and he has this skill "to visualise things in 3D."
5.4.2. Expertise
"I’m not Muslim, I don’t know a lot about Islam, I’m even not familiar with the Fez medina and the virginity of my eyes cleared from any historical, cultural, archaeological, theoretical or erudite consideration, took me though an innocent surrender, lifted me up and tipped me over in an amazing astonishment. […] I finally encountered the prop of my research, the ideal space that illustrated my discourse for an urban manifesto." Possompès, French architect
Scholars often take knowledge and affects as a basis to differentiate experts from non experts. They investigate the acquisition of expert skills through both learning and the development
211 of routines (Tornatore, 1991). Latour (2012) studies the making of scientific knowledge and describes it as the result of a chain of reference, a translation of experiences into immutable mobiles through scriptural and visual processes of stabilisation and formalisation. This stabilised and formalised knowledge is highly mobile and can circulate with a minimum of distortion, allows a rise in generality in knowledge, and becomes a powerful argument in a discussion because of its being taken for granted – Latour speaks of "black boxes". In this view, experts organise their experience around classified objects, mastered techniques, and recognised competences. They have learned to recognise the qualities of objects and to erase their impressions in favour of objective statements. Milton (2002) also points a denial of emotions in Western debates about the protection of nature to the benefit of a rationalist scientific discourse. In heritage studies, Heinich (2009) investigates the work of experts at the French General Inventory of Cultural Heritage. She stresses how experts determine the categorisation of an object as heritage, how they transform uncertainties into certainties thanks to professional training and to heritage criteria, how they differentiate authentic elements from uninteresting ones. She meticulously shows how experts are supposed to take a distance from affects – and by that token totally forgets any kind of experts’ affect in her analyse – and to give free speech to objectivity through scriptural procedures, categories, criteria, embodiment and experience. Although she opposes the affective actions and mobilisation of non experts to the expert work, Pecqueux (2006) argues that heritage experts and non experts have affects. Also, Datson (2008) shows how scientists linked passion, pleasure, senses and attention in their observation, description and categorisation of natural events and beings. James (2009 [1896]) more generally asserts that beliefs, opinions and passions drive the choices and attitudes of experts and scholars. In the following, I challenge this dichotomy between experts and non experts. Although Roqueplo (1997) defines, and limits, expertise as a knowledge input that scholars bring to answer to a demand and to include in a decision making process, this definition opens the door for other categories of "experts" than those who have the official status to take part in expertise. I introduce the category of autodidact experts as a first step to balance the usual opposition between experts and non experts. Willing to write an article about classical music amateurs, Stebbins (1992) underlines how social sciences haven't developed a concept of the amateur. He defines the practices of amateurs as a "serious leisure," that is to say "the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that is sufficiently substantial and interesting for the participant to find a career there in the acquisition and expression of its special skills and knowledge" (Stebbins, id.: 3). He lists some characteristics of this serious leisure, such as perseverance, personal efforts, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self image, social interactions, and belonging to a group. The
212 main difference between experts and amateurs then consists in the professional and official status given to the former while amateurs don’t have a status and are more emotional. I however underline a continuum between experts and non experts in terms of knowledge and affects. Bessy and Chateauraynaud (1995) as well as Hennion (2012) show the continuum between experts and forgers, as they share techniques, ways of working, competences. Also, as Trepos (2002: 8, my translation) underlines, experts and non experts share "a know how, that is to say a repertoire of keys for actions; a know understand, that is to say a means to appreciate how to use know how; and a know plan, that is to say a strategy to plan the different stages of his/her intervention." For my part, I argue that the difference between experts, non experts and autodidact experts doesn’t rely on the affective engagement, on the professional status, on the quantity or on the objectivity of knowledge but on the stabilisation and formalisation of the latter in the context of a specific engagement.
First of all, experts and non experts share senses and affects in their relation with houses. Abdelhay mentioned he could stay hours in his patio observing the plaster details, and Gigi proceeded to an in depth reading of the symbols in her patio. Jawad evoked the freshness of the mosaic and Hassan touched the coating when he entered a building site. Boulle, the French archaeologist, declared affects were at the core of his practice. "Emotions are continuous and very strong. The emotions we have when working on a cathedral, or other buildings, or when I tread upon an archaeological site, are essential driving principles. But it is impossible to describe them." Hassan was made indignant by owners destroying their house and expressed concern about a possible inscription of Fez on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Other members of institutions spoke of their memories and their nostalgia for their childhood in the medina. For different reasons, members of institutions and inhabitants may be sad when a house collapses. The former would be sad because they know they can't rebuild the house identically, the latter would be sad because a part of their life, of their neighbourhood, or their friends, died. More than a permanent quality of experts, the purported absence of affects is part of their relation, of their engagement, with houses. This "professional" engagement goes together with a reduction of affects through several means such as categories or definitions. But this distance doesn’t prevent experts to feel affects and to express them. Secondly, the engagement of expert, non experts and autodidact experts with houses involves knowledge and processes. Experts described the object and its physical characteristics with the help of techniques and normalisations – criteria, guides. Promoting scientific and objective knowledge, experts tend to discard local and practical knowledge as well as the place and role of
213 master workers in the restoration process. 130 Moreover, experts usually base their practice on scientific knowledge. In Hassan’s view, a relevant intervention involves specific knowledge and studies. Non experts also have knowledge. David developed a wide knowledge of architecture and houses in Fez. Loïc made a parallel between the tour of the craftsmen in Sète and the tour of guest houses in Fez. Several Moroccan inhabitants compared their house to the Merinid period and monuments in Spain even if they had never visited them. Amal spoke of the difference in architecture throught time. Amélie and her husband collected and displayed objects whose (hi)story and scarcity they knew. They also classified objects in categories and based on the benefits of fame or of self satisfaction they gave them. Inhabitants and experts also played with the image of Fez as a medieval and timeless city whose way of life is stuck in the past. Foreigners praise the medieval aspect of the medina. UNESCO consultants, such as Bianca (1980a), play with this feature of timelessness in their reports, urging for the preservation of the city. Moreover, both experts and non experts used to bodily metaphors when talking of the medina. When allocating a value of life to their house, inhabitants provided them with human body and human characteristics (cf. infra p. 229). In the same vein, Bianca (1980a) compares the medina to a dying body, and Ichter declared that, similarly to bodies, houses eventually end up dying. Finally, experts and non experts mentioned famous people and famous periods of time when talking about the medina and its houses. Ibn Khaldoun, Avéroès, Pope Sylvester, Moulay Idriss, are present in the discourses of inhabitants and shopkeepers, as well as in the leaflets of Ministries and other institutions in charge of the medina promotion. As such, all of them referred to the medina as " le pays de quelqu’un " ("the country of somebody") (Clemente, 2009: 215), that is to say a place marked by the past presence of famous people.
This overview of what experts and non experts share suggests that neither affects nor knowledge per se differentiate them. The difference is rather to be found in the privileged relation each category establishes with objects, that is to say in their expertise. Investigating gardening practices , Bergues (2004) distinguishes three models of expertise. Gardeners of rural gardens know the colours and size of their flowers – but rarely the scientific name – and they exchange flowers as a proof of a shared taste for flower. To them, flowers represent vertical links with former generations, for gardeners sometimes inherited them from parents or grandparents. They provide flowers with human qualities – flowers are generous, they
130 Paccard (1981) however dedicates his book about Moroccan crafts to the ma’almine (i.e. master craftsmen) for they are the practitioners and they transmit their knowledge and know how orally and rather jealously.
214 have a body and a rhythm of life. Gardeners of blossoming gardens – i.e. gardens dedicated to ornamental flowers and shrubs – go to garden centres to buy flowers and products. They also participate to competitions where they learn the image of a beautiful garden as defined by experts. Finally, the garden of the elites is based on an idealised, harmonious nature and a bygone past. Elites know the scientific name of flowers, buy flowers and plants in specialised garden centres, forbid purely ornamental flowers, and exchange knowledge about them. They particularly stress the importance of learning by observing and by reading magazines and books. These three kinds of expertise are found in Fez. Moroccan inhabitants put to the fore their experience – "I was there" or "I have been told this." They generally did not refer to categories to speak of their house while mentioning anecdotes and stories about their house or a famous house in their neighbourhood. They shared their concerns – about security or finding workers – with other inhabitants. In relation with the second kind of expertise, several inhabitants organised their relation with houses on the synthesis of what they had learned by talking with other inhabitants and by reading books or Internet websites. They guided their actions by images of the medina and its houses and they relied on their experience in Morocco and elsewhere. Although there was no (official) competition between houses in Fez – unofficial competition exists as the judgements in terms of taste (cf. supra p. 145) suggests – owners were proud to distinguish their house from other ones. They also made their house visible by allowing visitors to take a tour, or for other owners to receive advice and to share experiences. Autodidact experts developed a specific relation with specialised workers and antique dealers to improve their house. Finally, elites, be they foreigners or Moroccans, often compared their houses and the medina with remote places and exchanged knowledge with professionals located out of Morocco. Members of institutions have an easy access to this international network. Also, experts approached houses, the medina and heritage through categories and criteria. They mentioned books and articles specific to their discipline. On the basis on this distinction, I argue that rather than to a status, expertise relates to an engagement with the object. This engagement influences the kind of affect and knowledge experts, non experts and autodidact experts express. Tornatore (2004) asserts that experts are "engagés en critique " ("engagement in criticism") with objects, that is to say that they mix distance – through knowledge – and involvement – through the admiration of aesthetics and cognitive value in the case of heritage. This specific relationship comes from learning and results in a neutralisation – through its inclusion in a wider history – and an aesthetisation of heritage. In addition to learning, engagement relates to time. One need to spend time with the object to be able to tell what it is, what it does, what it provides, what its felt qualities are. Moreover, this engagement involves both an
215 individual and an object. The object must have the capacity to catch the attention 131 and to surprise the individual(s) in relation with it (Hennion and Teil, 2004). Experts are not the only ones to learn, to spend time with objects and to give them attention. Bessy and Chateauraynaud (1995) define expertise as an ability to take, an art of taking. In other words, anybody is able to "subject objects to relevant trials and to develop appropriate holds" 132 (Bessy and Chateauraynaud, id.: 236, my translation). As a consequence, Tornatore (2010:112, my translation) pleads for a softer notion of expertise 133 as "the capacity to become its [i.e. an object] spokesman, to engage into an action for its promotion. In other words, the ability of expertise relies in a relationship with an object and defines the position of the speaker; it is by no means reliant, contrary to its common meaning, on a profession and the competences related to it." This focus on human capacities discards an approach of human actors in terms of resources and favours the investigation of possible skills and competences that are neither embodied nor linked to any rational choice (Genard and Cantelli, 2008). In this context, the person who knows a lot of (hi)stories about houses possesses o form of expertise for many inhabitants. The Moroccan inhabitant repairing his house according to tradition possesses expertise. The antique dealer going on about the objects he sells is an expert for the foreign residents. The foreign owner living in the medina is an expert for the tourists. The member of the Inspection of Historical Monuments is an expert for UNESCO members. Instead of a profession, an attribute of human actors or a knowledge characterised by its objectivity, expertise is a kind of engagement developed between human actors and objects and resulting in a shared and recognised ability to speak in the name of these objects. The strength of expertise then depends on the degree of formalisation and stabilisation of the knowledge in categories and criteria that allow knowledge to circulate and to last in time. Experts generally rely on institutions and on a stable knowledge that circulates a lot, while non experts share anecdotes, advices and practices that remain in a situated location. This approach of expertise allows us to understand why experts, less numerous than non experts, hold the dominant discourse about houses, and about heritage more generally.
131 Attention is the "[m]oment of the problematic, uncertain formation of links between features and qualities, measurable effects and felt effects. Place of contacts where are deployed both the object and its effects, and the amateur and its pleasure" (Hennion and Teil, 2004: 122). 132 Similarly to affordances, holds are what the eye, the look, retains. 133 In his investigation of the heritage stage around blast furnaces in the North of France, Tornatore (2001) sketches out 7 kinds of expertise – working, technical, political, historical, artistic, socio anthropological – according to the position of the speaker on the stage and its capacity to speak of the blast furnaces in their name.
216 5.5. Contentious relationships with houses
In this chapter, I describe trials and conflicts 134 related to houses and the adjoining justifications given by individuals in the Fez medina. I used them as a methodological tool on the field because conflicts and trials do not fully characterise the daily relationship with houses . On the one hand, my presence and the questions I asked raised many trials for informants. I put emphasis on the contradiction between their discourses and their actions. I asked them to take position and to justify it. But these trials usually didn’t go beyond the walls of the house. On the other hand, consensus rather than conflict allow efficient actions with objects. Dassié (2006) shows in her investigation of the Versailles Park that emotions resulting from the storm and the destruction of trees lead to a consensus among people, and not to conflict. I then argue that conflicts are only one tool of investigation to spot justifications and their referent – conventions – as well as what individuals care for.
5.5.1. Conflicts in Fez
I have already stressed the disagreements arising about the styles of furnishing or the materials to use in construction works (cf. supra p. 104 and 149). Michel, a French resident, made sure workers hadn’t added cement to the coating each time he entered his house during construction works. In the room in which coatings were made, he would smell as well as crumble some up between his fingers. Michel even pressed charges against one worker who constantly added cement to the wall coating. The justice system supported the Moroccan worker because no precise rule forbids the use of cement – solely reinforced concrete is forbidden . Moroccan workers use cement because the coating dries faster this way and because cement is stronger and more sustainable than earth and sand . However, many foreigners like Michel refused to use cement because it doesn’t
134 Biershenck and Olivier de Sardan (1994) make of conflicts a methodological tool in the investigation of groups and their claims. In the heritage field, numerous scholars take conflicts as an open door to investigate heritage making. For instance, Veschambre (2008) focuses on the memorial conflicts within urban spaces, on the fights for the appropriation and the legitimatisation of heritage, on the struggles against oblivion, and on the relation between heritagisation and destruction. Scholars of the sociology of conventions – or economy of conventions, or theory of conventions – focus on discordances, on disputes, on trials. This focus is based on the assumption of a plurality of worlds and of a permanent alignment of human beings with each other in their actions in the aim to reach momentary agreements (Dodier, 1991). Scholars put to the fore the notion of coordination or negotiation, that is to say the processes to reach harmony and alignment through engagement. Scholars also work with the notion of trial between human actors and with their material environment. In these trials, human beings justify their actions and sayings. Doing so, they refer to conventions, that is to say "interpretative frameworks set up and used by actors in order to evaluate situations of action and their coordination" (Diaz Bone and Thévenot, 2010: 4, my translation). Conventions, be they human beings, material or immaterial things, are not linked to a particular situation, and actors mobilize them to justify qualities and ways of doing.
217 allow the walls to breathe. Another kind of conflict occurred between neighbours. One day that I visited her, Gigi told me the police had just left her house. She has filed a suit against her neighbour, a Moroccan guest house owner, a few days earlier because he had raised the rooftop wall and had placed air conditioning units above Gigi’s terrace. This obstructed her view of the medina on that side and all the water and waste produced by the air conditioning units was dropping into her terrace. She initially reported the problem to the presidents of the Association of Guest houses but they told her it was not their responsibility to arbitrate this problem. She then decided to file a lawsuit because the neighbour didn’t have the right to raise the walls and to begrime her house. Several Moroccan informants also told me their neighbours had called the local authorities when they were undertaking works because of the noise or damages they caused. Most of the time, these informants asserted neighbours had called authorities not because of a real problem but on the grounds of jealousy. Finally, both Moroccans and foreigners reported problems and lawsuits with their business partner after they had bought a house together. Evelyne’s Moroccan partner took the money for the guest house construction work to restore and open his own guest house. Michel’s Moroccan partner refused to pay his part of the house. Mehdi’s Moroccan partner stole money allocated to the construction works. Another conflict concerns the replacement of wooden doors by metal ones. Inhabitants and shopkeepers argued metal doors were cheaper when one needs to replace the old wooden door (a new metal door cost between 800 and 1000 Dh 135 while a new wooden door costs between 1500 and 2000 Dh 136 ). They also underlined their strength and resistance as an asset against robberies. Najib, a shopkeeper, replaced his shop and his private house’s wooden doors by metal ones in order to be fashionable and to insure a better security against thieves. Tayyibi, the former Fez ENA director, bemoaned this trend. According to him, the metal doors are not beautiful at all and they threaten the traditional aspect of the medina. "What I think about when seeing these doors is a growing lack of security, a closure and a distance toward the other, less hospitality, more indivi dualism, a lack of innovation and adapted solutions, mass production, monotony, archetypal models, disharmony." A ENA student acknowledged that "[u]nfortunately, we cannot hinder the march of time even if it goes against our taste and artistic preferences. Evolution is unavoidable. Similarly to TV and satellites dishes before, metal doors modernise the life of residents who are now open to the outside world. As regards the aesthetic value of these doors, we can put the blame on the inhabitants’ limited economic means."
135 72 and 91 €. 136 135 and 180 €.
218
Pic. 30. Two decorated metal or wood doors. Credit: M. Istasse
I observed few conflicts between inhabitants and members of institutions. The most obvious kind of conflict occurred during the controls by the commission issuing the work permit for tourist accommodations. Members of the commission reported the lack of respect of the rules, while owners complained about the lack of expertise of the members (cf. supra p. 137). But in general, Moroccan inhabitants showed indifference to public authorities. There are exceptions, however. During the Protectorate, t he French decided to keep the small shops in the central area (Qissariya ) as such, because they participated to the medina's medieval essence. The mercantile elite for its part wanted to modernise the shops, to replace the wooden doors by vertical doors and to have shop windows. Prosper Ricard considered these changes as overly European and threatening the picturesque and original look of the area. A fire in 1918 finally brought about a compromise. Merchants could change their doors and window display, but they had to keep their alignment.
Conflicts occurred among experts and members of the commission issuing work permits. Hassan, the architect Ichter and the economist Lahbil Tagemouati did not always see eye to eye on the actions to carry out in the medina. Tayyibi, the former ENA director, complained about the lack of public and institutional actions. He also pointed to the absence of proper architectural training for those interested in the restoration of old houses. Taking the example of construction works in houses, Hassan defended the idea whereby it was unthinkable to destroy the mosaic of the central courtyard if it was not unavoidable, or to add a second staircase disrupting the symmetry of the house. The preservation of the structure and the architectural decoration took precedence over no other consideration. "If you undertake radical
219 changes to a traditional house, it is clear my answer is going to be unfavourable. […] If they [i.e. members of others institutions] tr y to convince me, they will fail because it is against the law, against the rules." On the other hand , the chief of firemen saw no problem in destroying the mosaic to put in pipes, and he obliged owners to build a second staircase for security reasons. Members of the Ministry of Tourism for their part agreed with major transformation when turning a house into a tourist accommodation because they first and foremost promote the comfort of tourists and the fame of the city. A project of turning Dar Ba Mohammed Chergui, a huge palace, into a five star hotel offers a striking example of these conflicts between members of institutions. Hassan vilified members of the municipality. "We gave back twice an unfavourable recommendation to the bacha [i.e. city Governor ]. I personally wrote them [i.e. other public authorities ]. They want me to change my mind, meaning to understand this investment will create job opportunities, and is then beneficial to the economy of the city." However, Hassan refused and introduced a request to list that palace as a national heritage in order to preserve it from transformation. On the other hand, a member of the Ministry of Tourism vividly supported the projects for two reasons. First of all, it would create jobs for medina inhabitants during the restoration works and afterwards for the management as well. Secondly, the palace is located at the heart of the medina. The opening of a five star hotel there automatically involves a reinforcement of security along at least the two main streets of the medina. This kind of conflict between members of institutions is by no means new. Among the first departments of the French Residence in 1912 were the Urban Planning Department and the Fine Arts and Historical Monuments Department. Both were supposed to work hand in hand to "protect the local colour," the Fine Arts and Historical Monuments being responsible for the aesthetic and the preservation of the medina, and the Urban Planning taking care of the urban development. In the 1920s, in order to connect Rabat, Fez and Oujda by train, a train station was built in Bab FtouH (i.e. a neighbourhood bearing the name of a gate), outside of the medina walls, after the victory of aesthetic and heritage reasons against economic and development ones . In the 1930s, the Semarine gate in the mellaH (i.e. Jewish neighbourhood) crystallised another opposition. Traffic jams were numerous, and members of the municipality had decided to make a larger opening. They won against the Fine Arts Department, headed at that time by Jules Borely.
Finally, conflicts interest scholars investigating the various restoration projects that took place in the medina. Idrissi Janati (2001) outlines the two main and conflicting logics orienting the preservation actions conducted in Fez. The first, conservative, looks backwards and aims to preserve the old medina urban fabric, to preserve the local and identity specific features against
220 Westernisation. Lyautey implemented this archaeological and anti interventionist approach – he built the New City clearly separated from the medina – and UNESCO applied it during the first decade of the listing. The second logic, more progressive and innovative, aims to introduce modernity in the medina and to upgrade it on the basis of Le Corbusier’s ideas and the tabula rasa ideology. The question of accessibility to the medina crystallises the encounter of both logics. The medina has always been a "car free urban zone surrounded by city walls" whose contact with the exterior passes by "a hierarchical system of gates" (Idrissi Janati, id.: 362, my translation). Contemporary changes, characterised by more intense flows inside and outside the medina, lead to transportation and accessibility problems. In the 1970s, an opening was made in R'Cif square and the Oued Boukhrareb, the river separating the medina in two banks, was covered in that place. It became a bus and taxi final and parking station. The works stopped in the 1980s after the Master Plan recommended the absence of any bus or car in the medina. The logic changed to promote the centrality of the medina and the improvement of the living standards there while preserving its heritage. An international architects and urban planner office managed by Pinseau updated this Master Plan in the 1990s. Within a Haussmanian logic, it turned the medina into one neighbourhood among others. At the same time, both ADER and the Urban Agency were created, and the Moroccan Government, together with the World Bank and Moroccan and international consultants, carried out studies. They concluded the enclosure of the medina was one of the reasons of its degradation and a hurdle to its development. Shopkeepers and craftsmen who owned a car supported this idea. But several civil servants and academics proposed other logics to avoid the deletion of the medina from the World Heritage list. According to them, accessibility would not solve the major problem of security but would rather threaten the ecological and heritage values of the medina (the simple way of life or proximity of public and collective facilities).
5.5.2. Justifications
The aforementioned trials show that informants refer to justifications to put their argument to the fore, to defend their position and to justify their actions. I take the specific example of the replacement of doors. A first justification is economic, as a metal door is cheaper than a wooden door. Another justification is more practical. A metal door is easier to install – it requires less work – and is less heavy than a wooden one – a metal door is easier to deal with, particularly in the case of old people. Aesthetics constitute another justification. Some informants condemned metal doors for not being aesthetic while others installed a metal door to follow a trend. One final justification is
221 security. Metal doors are supposed to be stronger than wooden ones – anyone who had been burglarised or anyone willing to prevent a theft installed a metal door on their home. More generally, i n the conflicts I described, the main justifications were technical (concrete is stronger than lime and sand), legal (to respect the official rules or not, be they related to heritage or not), economic (to buy the cheapest materials), functional (no function or reason for an architectural feature), and aesthetic (beauty of an architectural feature). They may also relate to preservation aims (to preserve the traditional aspect of the medina), security, comfort (for oneself or for guests), or jealousy. Justifications are also found outside conflicts. Economy is the main justification for undertaking actions or not in a house. Moroccan inhabitants said they did not undertake major works because of the costs involved. Jawad insisted on the cost of undertaking works in the medina with traditional materials. He also bought industrial carved plaster to decorate the walls in his shop because traditional carved plaster was too expensive. Moreover, some informants linked the lack of works to a feeling of economic inferiority. Nordin, a Moroccan guest house employee, declared, "[b]efore, if we said we lived in the medina, it meant we were rich, we had a huge house. Now, if we say we live in the medina, it means we are poor. Inhabitants want to move to the New City. That’s why they [i.e. Moroccan inhabitants] don’t undertake work in the house, they do nothing. " Close to the economic justification, we find that of tourism. The latter justifies both the presence of foreigners in the city and the works owners undertake in their houses. According to Gigi, as the house is a tourist accommodation – and not a familial house – it has been improved instead of being restored or preserved. Simon decided to add some architectural decoration in the guest house to give guests a better feeling of Morocco, for his Art Deco house was characterised by simplicity. Memories, habits and personal interests constitute another kind of justification. Some Moroccan informants didn’t want to change the atmosphere they had always known in the familial house. In tourist accommodations, Moroccan owners undertook major changes but they made a point of honour in preserving the atmosphere of their familial house and in keeping some elements like the fountain, a tree, or by naming the rooms with the names of relatives. 137 For instance, Abdu,
137 Moroccan inhabitants generally didn't name their house. They referred to it as the familial house, or they named it after one of its quality. Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, declared her house was an "ecological house" because it was made traditionally without reinforced concrete. Her house was also the "house of the sun" because there was a lot of natural light. Mohammed, a retired soldier living in the medina, covered his roof with a telephone network (called tissalat ) plastic poster, and, during the interview, we renamed the house the " tissalat house" for fun. Some foreigners also put to the fore a quality of their house to name it and to present it. Antoine presented his house under the form of a riddle. He offered me a tour of his house and showed it room by room, explaining the changes he brought and the history he knew. He also told me he would give me clues to answer the riddle at the end of the tour. Once we were back in the ground floor salon, he asked "have you found the answer?" His house was a chikha t's house, the house of the mistress of a prestigious lord.
222 a Moroccan guest house owner, declared that he "wanted to come back a bit to my childhood when I lived in a traditional house. When I was a teenager, I left to visit the other side of the world. I stayed a bit outside [i.e. abroad]. When coming back here, I wanted to live in the modern side, in the New City. And now, I'm back to the root, back where I found my soul." In opposition to continuity and habits, informants mentioned that they wanted to follow the fashion, to be modern. David, Antoine and Philippe mentioned the successive fashions in architectural decoration throughout history. Najib, a Moroccan shopkeeper, changed his entrance wood door for a metal one because "it is the trend." Also, some foreign inhabitants proudly mentioned how they had been the first ones to do something, to have launched a trend. For instance, a German guest house owner claimed to have first implemented the thematic bedroom furnishing and the trend to hang up kaftan (i.e. traditional cloth) on the wall. Amélie and Loïc described Swiss clocks as an important, but bygone fashion in Fez which they tried to revive – one could find these clocks in guest houses or in religious buildings. Solidarity is also mentioned by foreigners to justify the help they gave to their Moroccan acquaintances or neighbours. In their view, as well as for several architects, restoring the nearby houses is a way to improve the life of neighbours since it brings some security in the architectural structure. After she had paid his neighbour to rebuild a wall in his house, Emma declared that she had "been helping in that little way." Helen, the manager of Fez Riads, claimed that the win win principle was her core principle. Tourists want to sleep in the medina, tourist accommodations owners can hosts them, and money can benefit inhabitants who have the desire but not the money to take care and to improve their environment. There is also an educational and communicational justification. In the view of many members of institutions, it is necessary to learn about houses and heritage to take care of them, to become aware of them. Kate suggested that UNESCO " create[s] educational centres for women and craftsmen to train them to their art." Tayyibi, the former ENA director, insisted on the role of his school to be a place of awareness and dialogue about architecture and heritage, a place to teach students to know their heritage and to respect it when undertaking works. The A.J.V.C.I
Tourist accommodation owners have to name their house as the official rules ask for in order to be registered. Ziyarates families often gave the name of their family to the house. Fettah gave three names to his houses, in relation with the activities he developed and aims he wanted to fulfill. "Al Kantara" is the "bridge" between cultures and people, "Needa Fez" gathered "the friends of Fez" to think of the medina preservation, and "Fez Hadara" aimed at the promotion of cultural activities linked to "the civilization of Fez". Evelyne named her house "La Clé de Fès" (The Key of Fez) because she found a box with keys in the patio during the works. Most of the time, owners chose names of persons – Riad Damia, Dar Victoria, Dar el Ghalia – or names related to places in Fez – Riad Boujloud, Riad Souafine, Dar Seffarine – or to the Orient – Riad Sheherazade, Riad Mabroucka. Also, owners favoured Moroccan like names easy to pronounce in any language and different from others so that there is no confusion possible – Dar Victoria, or Riad Soundouz. Moroccan owners rather chose names of relatives. Dar Anebar is the name of the owner's grand mother. Every room of Dar Ghalia was given the name of a female relative.
223 (Association of International Young Work camp Volunteers) developed the summer work camp of construction works as an educational project for children to not stay idly on the streets during the summer holidays. David deplored the lack of interest and knowledge among young generations to explain the deteriorations and damages done to religious monuments in the medina. Finally, Adbelali, a Morocco French guest house owner, mentioned an aesthetic justification. The beauty of his house prevented him from digging up a swimming pool in his patio. "This house is huge, with gardens in perfect condition. It is a perfect model of Arab Andalus architecture. So, it would have been criminal, it would have been ridiculous [to have a swimming pool]. I have a wonderful pool, why should I dig a swimming pool? It would never be as pretty as it is now. And we would never have the same atmosphere without the noise of the running water."
Conflicts do not constitute the main kind of relation individuals have with houses in the Fez medina. As a tool for investigation, they shed light on the problems and on the justifications of individuals. During conflicts and trials, informants evaluate the situation according to criteria and confront them to define the best way to achieve their goal or a negotiated agreement. This statement is close to the theory of convention. According to this theory, conflicts consist in trials for human actors to find an agreement in court, that is to say an agreement around a common worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991). Through their justifications, informants referred to various conventions, such as the relations between neighbours, beauty, or rules. With these conventions, a situation is made exemplary – it is not a specific situation anymore but it becomes a general situation. For instance, a conflict between the members of two institutions is turned into a conflict between values or between institutions. However, the legal apparatus – one arrangement to reach generalisation and coordination – does not especially bring a solution to a conflict. Many informants who experienced a lawsuit said it was not useful. They spent hours, days, years and much money for almost nothing, since they usually found an informal agreement with their opponent. Justifications also shed light on actions carried by human actors. Inhabitants preserve and transmit houses. Fettah and David were involved in the preservation of the medina. They created associations and they encouraged foreigners to buy houses there. Preservation also made Gigi busy in the reading of the hidden messages in her house and their transmission to tourists. She moreover stored pictures and descriptions of the patio in her computer and she wrote texts about the patio and its symbolism. Abdelhay stayed in the familial house and didn’t get married in order to take care of both the familial business and the house. Instead of selling the house and moving to the New City, he decided to welcome tourists. Youssef wanted to keep the objects in the familial house when he
224 made it into a guest house, to preserve the familial atmosphere to a certain extent. To compare this with another heritage site, Brumann (2009b) underlines how one of the main reasons for inhabitants to preserve traditional houses in Kyoto is the aesthetic and the emotional harmony of the house, that is to say its beauty, its atmosphere and the feeling of harmony the architecture of the house provides. Inhabitants also instrumentalised houses, meaning in this context that they used them for another purpose than their initial function. The transformation of houses into tourist accommodations is a glaring example of instrumentalisation. On the one hand, tourist accommodation owners transformed their house not to make it into a familial house but to welcome guests. On the other hand, they presented their house on their website in a way that attracts guests – they improved pictures, they put to the fore extravagant advantages and qualities of their house. Organisers of music festivals also choose famous houses – Dar Chergui, Riad Glaoui – to host concerts. Finally, politicians instrumentalise houses when they ask for a restoration budget from the Government, or when they promote the identity of Morocco and Fez though the presentation of famous houses and heritage. In the investigation of the link between justifications, conventions and actions, the theory of Boltansky and Thévenot (1991) stresses the skills, abilities, competences of human actors to spot the worthy (i.e. valuable, which might be endowed with a quality) elements in their environment, to rely on them in the trial, to develop arguments about their worth (i.e. reference quality in a situation). However, Boltanski and Thévenot (id.) mainly work with human actors and the worth they allocate to other human actors according to conventions. Objects only support this allocation. I for my part was interested in an object, houses, and how it was allocated a heritage quality. Secondly, I faced an issue: is heritage a new city with its own worth, or a worth among others, or an object inscribed in a city? At first sight, I could hold the three positions: heritage is a city whose worth is authenticity, heritage is a worth circulating between various worlds or heritage is an object part of the domestic world based on intergenerational transmission. Also, one can find the six worlds in UNESCO writings. The 1972 Convention about the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage is inscribed in the domestic world, the nomination guidelines in the opinion world, the management guidelines in the industrial one, the discourse of Malraux from 8 March 1960 about the safeguard of Abou Simbel is inscribed in the world of inspiration, the Conventions defining how UNESCO works belong to the civic world, while critics about its politicisation show its links with the market world. As a consequence, rather than a link with a specific world and worth, I underline the link between what people care for and the allocation of qualities to the object of care. In Dewey’s (1939)
225 view, to value (valuing) means "to prize," "to care for," "to admire," "to be concerned by," "to give interest to." The last chapter of this section is dedicated to value giving, or qualification.
226 5.6. Qualification
Many scholars study art making. Shapiro and Heinich (2012: 20, my translation) name it "ratification," that is to say the "process of transformation of non art into art", resulting from a horizontal – and not vertical – displacement of a border. In the heritage realm, Heinich (2009, 2012) studies the axiology of heritage, that is to say the system of values underlying the criteria and the statements of heritage making, also named heritagisation. Rather than their heritagisation, I focus on the qualification 138 of houses in Fez, that is to say the recognition, allocation and evaluation 139 of a quality value 140 (Thévenot, 2006) to a thing. According to Descola (2011) tangible and intangible things are packages of qualities that humans detect or ignore. Berque (2010) coins "prédication " (predication) the ontological jump giving birth to predicates from substance and realising the features of things. Although he acknowledges the role of human beings in this process, he rather focuses on the ontological difference between the predicate and the substance. Once the predicate – the quality – given, the thing is ontologically different – is given a "surcroît d’être " ( surplus of being) – and cannot be something else. I however argue that a house can be endowed with several qualities without one dominating or being ontologically different from all the others. Moreover, Berque forgets the physical engagement with things, their experience, and drastically distinguishes the tangible and the intangible aspect of things – he mostly investigates the symbolic and social contemplation of landscapes through texts and words allowing for the circulation of this predicate (abstracted from the substance "earth"). As James (1976) put it, human actors tend to identify salient parts in their environment, to fix and to abstract them through nouns and adjectives, and to maintain them into existence. "E xperience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions" (James, id.: 94). Qualification then emerges in a specific situation 141 from the direct appreciation or depreciation of a situation, a thing, an event, a person and this
138 The notion of qualification is rooted in the sociology of work and of economy which both focus on the qualification of goods and human beings. Scholars such as Karpik, Thévenot, Callon, or Musselin give interest to the learnt and the needed qualities for a worker to be hired or for a good to be used. Scholars of the sociology and anthropology of art also pay interest in qualification. Michaud (1999) defines art qualities as secondary qualities that allow recognising a kind of practice – artistic practices – through the precision in the repetition, the accuracy of the resemblance, the monumental aspect, the creativity and inventiveness. "The piece of art must have some of these qualities to worth, at a certain time or in a specific community, as a piece of art" (Michaud, id.: 36, my translation). 139 According to Musselin and Paradeise (2002), identification is the definition of a good or an individual and evaluation is the judgement of the attributes. 140 I use the term "quality" and not "value" because this latter in anchored in political economy and economic theory. Moreover, the term "value "relates to the dichotomy between alienable and inalienable goods while I'm interested in the qualitative richness and features of things. 141 This focus on experience avoids making a difference between primary qualities – supposed to be objective – and secondary qualities – supposed to be subjective as well as it prevents from formalism – which equates a quality with a form and with a thing.
227 appreciation/depreciation participates to its individualisation. But according to Dewey, the allocation of a quality is not purely verbal. "In empirical facts, the measure of the value a person attaches to a given end is not what he says about its preciousness but the care he devotes to obtaining and using the means without which it cannot be attained" (Dewey, 1939: 27). Also, a thing exists beside its qualification. The house (as a building) exists even if it has not been qualified as a dwelling or as a piece of heritage. In the following, I describe the qualities informants allocated to their house and I investigate how and when the heritage quality of houses emerges. I finish by challenging the notion of heritage border presupposed by the heritagisation of a thing. If qualification is equated with the displacement of a border, as Shapiro and Heinich (2012) assert, should then an object belong to only one category? Should an object be qualified as heritage, and nothing else?
5.6.1. Qualities of houses
Most of the time, informants mentioned the physical and architectural qualities of their house. Guy, when asked to describe his house in a few words, chose only architectural terms such as the patio, mosaic, wood, carved plaster and the fountain. Inhabitants of small houses underlined the warmth of the house during the winter months. As Amal put it, a small house and low ceilings contribute to a greater feeling of warmth. Omar explained the difference of temperature between the outside and the inside of the house. "Walls of medina houses are extremely wide. They can be up to 60 centimetres wide. […] As the walls are thick, they heat slowly when the sun hit them and the house is not very warm inside. And it is the same in winter. The cold is not well carried through the thickness, so the house keeps its heat." On the other hand, physical and architectural features may appear to be disadvantages. Many inhabitants complained about bad odours coming from the sewer, from a nearby tannery or about deep staircases. Rachid, a Moroccan architect, said that he was a man of " a certain age, and I have problems with my knees. It is really hard to climb some steps. […] Of course, if you are used to it, it is a physical exercise." Also, m any Moroccans declared the house was too big for women to clean it properly. As families are divided and many women are working – mostly as house lady or cook in guest or private houses –, there is little time and help to take care of the daily works in the house. Houses were also said to be damp. Several inhabitants showed the moisture on the ground floor walls, complained that painting didn't dry fast and caused blisters to form. In terms of luminosity, Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, compared houses in the medina to guts and Helen, a British resident, even spoke of rabbit holes.
228 Many informants endowed houses with a life, with a personhood. The vocabulary carried this quality of life when informants spoke of the house through bodily and human metaphors. A house empty of its inhabitants is "dead," the walls can’t be covered with cement because it doesn’t allow them to "breathe," the medina is transformed "into an old body weakened by time," the house is a friend or a baby, the house has a "human size" to live comfortably in, workers "raped" or "undressed" the house during the construction works, the house has a soul or a spirit. When Gigi entered her house for the first time, "it was dying" and waiting for somebody to be revived. She took it upon herself to make it known and alive again. In her view, the house also has a soul. "I think, following Chateaubriand’s writings, well, I will not recite the poem, but 'Objets inanimés avez vous donc une âme qui s'attache à notre âme et la force d'aimer? '142 And I think there is indeed a soul and energy in houses. You know, everything is energy for me. Waves converge to one point, and some points last longer, such as pyramids, and others collapse, such as some houses in the medina." Informants underlined that the life of the house was longer than human life. They admitted that the house existed before them and would probably survive them. In this context, they could only take care of it. Moroccans emphasised this idea of the house surviving their human inhabitants when they talked of their familial house. They insisted on the continuity in furniture and in the way of life, and on the – problematic – transmission to future generations – as young Moroccans generally prefer to live in the New City. In keeping with this idea of life and death, Meriem, a Moroccan architect, asserted that "it is not a disaster if a house collapses. If it does so, well, good ridance, it frees some space. All the houses are not meant to live endlessly. I think it is very human in fact. And I find it very poetic." This quality of personhood allows the development of an intimate relation with the house. I have already mentioned the "love at first sight" similar to the one has with another human being. Also, some foreigners, such as Gigi, declared they were "friends" with the house. As Kate explained, " I did live here through the restoration. And I know every corner of this house so well. It is like an old friend. A friend you had fought with but still a friend, and your friendship is longer because you had a bit of difficulty." This friendship "is like being in a relationship with a person." Evelyne compared her "house to an old lady with scarves, rheumatism. She always has a pain somewhere. She wobbles. I pamper her." To many informants, the soul of the house – foreigners more likely spoke of positive energy – consists in its character, its cachet, its authenticity, what provides its uniqueness and what should be preserved when undertaking works. Antoine advised me to "live in the house. And then you
142 "Inanimate things, have you a soul do you, which attaches to our soul and the strength to love, " my translation from Lamartine, Milly ou la terre natale written in 1827.
229 discover it has a spirit. Right now, this house is ordinary. But when it is night and that the artificial lighting is on, it is enchanting. You are into another world." Informants also associated the soul with the life in the house. In Amélie's view, "the patio gives everything. The soul of the ryad is there. Life is there." Philippe, a French art historian, asserted that the spirit of a house was "the people who lived there, who left something behind, who left a trace." Others mentioned the presence of other beings such as genies. As Abderahim, a Moroccan employee in a tourist restaurant, put it, two kinds of inhabitants live in a house, human beings and genies. When one of them leaves the house, the latter dies and becomes a ruin. Also, many Moroccans evoked the feeling of not being alone in the house, particularly at night. Fatimzohra, a Moroccan inhabitant, was afraid of sleeping alone in a medina house because of jnun (i.e. genies).
The third main quality allocated to houses is beauty. The care for beauty is obvious in the interest inhabitants have in furnishing their house (cf. supra p. 137) and in making them pleasant. However, informants generally linked beauty to a particular element or a specific room. Inhabitants often presented their rooftop terrace or the patio as the most beautiful place in the house. Their terrace offered the best view on Fez. Loïc said that "the house is like a mystery. You discover its beauty when you raise your head from the patio." Steve, an American tourist accommodation owner, described his house as being "embellished," as "a piece of art" because of the 50 plus patterns of mosaic in his house. Informants also mentioned the symmetry and proportions of houses. As Marie, a French tourist accommodation owner, said, "[y]ou notice a balance in the architectural structure. For instance, [all around the patio] you have four doors, they are super symmetric. Houses are built following principles, and symmetry is one of them. Just look at columns or the windows system. The basic structures and geometrical principles, according to me, make the beauty of the house." This beauty is not always material. According to Abderahim, a Moroccan employee in a tourist restaurant, human beings see the beauty of houses through their heart and not through their eyes. Youssef, a Moroccan guest house owner, said that his house is beautiful to him, even on the architectural plans, because he carries it in his heart.
Houses also have a spiritual quality, that is to say they relate to immaterial forces, be they religious or not . Abdelhay insisted on the religious aspect of his house. Watching his house from the patio gives him the feeling of exploring the Arab Andalus culture as religion is inscribed in the
230 architectural decoration. As Moulay Idriss dedicated the city to religion in the 9 th century, 143 the house reflects religion in the fountain and in carved plaster writings lauding the words of God. Fettah, for his part, explained that rooms are 12 meters high in order to elevate one to Allah. To him, a fountain is beautifully decorated because it brings the water needed by Muslims in their everyday practices of purification and cleaning the house and the body . In his view, the constant presence of water shows the religious aspect of the house, as water is essential to Muslims. He also made architecture into the major art. Wood, mosaic , plaster, are only materials behind which the principle of unity and beauty rests. In his view, foreigners gave more importance to materials, their beauty, and their authenticity. Gigi described the symbolism of the architectural decorations as related to Sufism. This quality is written in the decoration and writings of the patio. However, nobody could translate these writings and the few who tried generally stated that "these writings concern Allah, but are not Koranic writings." As the meaning of numerous decorations has been lost and nobody could give her an explanation, Gigi ascribed to herself the mission to find them back. She specified that her astrologist training helped her in reading the meaning of the symbols in the patio. "Everything holds together, everything is meaningful." Also, her work of beautician was helpful in noticing details in the architectural decoration while her computer allowed her to zoom in on details and store the information under the form of pictures and descriptions. Beyond religion, Gigi stated that the house passes on "a message of humanism, peace, openness, union. Everything is represented in the patio for human beings to help each other and to stay united. And I think this house should be better known, because humanity can learn something positive and peaceful from it. People some 260 years ago had already understood it was better to get along and to accept all the religions, by accepting each other, by opening up granaries when others were hungry. It is more than humanist, it is altruistic." Other informants, particularly Moroccan ones, mentioned genies sharing houses with human beings. As they live together in the house, human beings have to respect spirits. In Jawad's house, the mother regularly poured milk in the sewing pipes to soothe genies and make them happy. Many inhabitants explained they burnt cedar scent to maintain good relations with genies in their house. Stories about the presence of genies in houses are abundant. Abdelhaq, a Moroccan belt maker, recalled personal memories. "I tell you things as they were. My father had his own room in our house, where he communicated with spirits. I didn't know anything at that time, because my
143 Moulay Idriss II is said to have declared: "O Allah, You know I have not built this city out of vanity, out of a desire for fame, or from pride. But I would like You to be adored here, that Your book be read and that Your law be applied as long as the world lasts. O God, guide toward godness those who live here and help them to accomplish godness. Veil the sword of anarchy and dissent in their eyes."
231 father never spoke about that. He died in 1982, lay rahmou [i.e. polite expression when speaking of a dead]. One day, I came back home and I saw smoke on the ground. We had a house that is now a bazaar. The entrance door is here, and here it is a wall [he draws the entrance door and the wall with his fore finger on the table]. So, I saw smoke. At first, I laughed, but then I thought 'Shit, it is dark, maybe it is a fire.' So I went nearer, and the smoke gathered together and stood up in front of me, like that [he draws a human shape in the empty space], with a head. I clearly remember. I was working on my Bac S [i.e. school degree] and I thought it was an alien. I was afraid. He turned on himself and pffff, he was gone. I always thought it was an alien. But five years ago, a man told me my father communicated with spirits. Genie or djin , it is the same. And I remembered my father's room, huge and dark. My father told me not to enter this room. He knew a spirit was living there." And he continued with several stories of that kind. "It is not all houses. But there are forces in some houses for sure." Finally, escapes links with spirituality. Evelyne spoke in terms of dream when she said that she had had "a hard time, a very, very hard time. It was difficult everywhere. Because my husband didn't understand why I kept on going on this house. He told me 'Evelyne, you have all the money you need, you do not need to do this.' But I answered him 'It is not a matter of money anymore; it is a matter of dream.' I dreamed of myself in this house." Also, according to Rachid, a Moroccan architect, "dream and poetry are inscribed in the volumes and decorations."
Informants also issued a quality of exceptionality and uniqueness to their house. "It [i.e. the house] is a bit similar to the Lascaux cave, there is one in Fez. […] The others [houses] are beautiful but they don't have anything special about them. They are inscribed into a tradition, they have a style, they are typical, but they are not original." And she added later "[in other houses], there is nothing in their decoration. Only flowers and repeated drawings. But here, there is this richness [in the decoration]. […] If there is one house you have to see in Fez, it is this one [laugh]. It is so unique and extraordinary to me" (Gigi). Nora, a British guest house owner, explained that the originality of her guest house came from the disco ball in the patio, the covered rooftop terrace, and more generally the "young atmosphere" she created in her house. According to Ruth, the exceptionality of her house lies in its perfect symmetry. Antoine attributed the exceptionality of his house to its bartal (i.e. alcove) – a rare thing in such a small house – to the refinement of the architectural decoration, and to its history.
Instead of being exceptional and unique, the house may also be representative of the Moroccan culture or the Moroccan way of life. Loïc made of his house a perfect example of Arab
232 Andalus house. He even declared that he "wouldn't have bought a less culturally imprinted house." He presented his house as "a jewel" in order to discover the Moroccan culture. The visit of Morocco starts in the house. […] When you enter the house, you know you are somewhere else" because the house "reflects an art of life, tastes, specific ways of building. It is marked by a tradition." Diya, a Moroccan inhabitant, made of this Arab Andalus representativeness a mark of distinction between Morocco and other Arab countries. "A traditional house reflects the Moroccan architecture, the Arab Andalus architecture. It is purely Moroccan and Andalus. When Andalus people left Spain, they split through North Africa. And a lot [came] in Morocco. The architecture is like in Granada and in Cordoba." Although she has never been to the Alhambra, she said palaces and houses in Fez are similar to this building. "The matter is not the size but the detail. Even the Alhambra, according to the architectural plans, consists of small houses linked together. It is luxury in the detail. There is nothing big. But when you go to the Emirates, everything is in the size. The bedroom, I don't know how they do, it is as big as a house!" Beyond being an appreciated quality, the representativeness of a house has wider consequences. In Fettah's view, architecture is "the cultural genetic" of a society and a "cultural expression that gathers the whole society." A harmonious house then reflects a harmonious society. As a consequence "[w]e [i.e. Moroccans] find our history, our past, our childhood in these houses." In this context, he asserted that his house was a way of "making an ethnography of my own culture." Philippe, an art historian, also made of houses the result of "a certain way of life, or more precisely art of life. Art of life, meaning that everything participates to the well being of inhabitants, for them to enjoy being inside instead of going out. Because people didn't go out often, especially women." Hassan thought it was important to pass on this representativeness to future generations. In his view, "domestic architecture is the witness of the way of life and the architectural evolution in Morocco." The destruction of the architectural structure or the decorative patterns prevents future generations from seeing and knowing this way of life. Also, the various categories of houses – dār , ryad, masriya , ksar – represent the evolution of architecture in Morocco and in Fez more precisely.
Houses also have an economic quality. The house is a source of income, a commercial project in the case of a tourist accommodation. This economic quality has an influence on the choice of the house: easy access, the proximity of markets and taxis, number of rooms. Due to this economic quality, owners undertook many restoration and upgrading works. Informants then mentioned the investment they made and the money they earned. The tourist crisis, which stared in early 2010, made tourism accommodation owners anxious about their capacity to pay both their
233 employees and the everyday works in the house. Houses are indeed "an upkeep abyss" because of the everyday tiny works they involve – this feature is common to both residential and tourism houses. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, specified the paradise he lives in costs a lot in time and money in order to remain a paradise. With humour, he declared that houses couldn’t be similar to the Muslim paradise, as some scholars wrote it and as some Moroccan elites lauded it, for in the Muslim paradise, nobody has to pay his comfort. Finally, the Moroccan wife of a Belgian guest house owner, declared a house in the medina "is priceless." She was born in the medina but her parents had sold the grandfather's house when she was a child and she regretted it quite a bit.
Informants also mentioned functionality, and comfort, as other qualities. Aside from tourist accommodation owners, inhabitants declared their house was first and foremost their place to live. Many Moroccan informants asserted that "dār diali, saken ana ou walidi. Ou katji l’ayla tchoufou (i.e. This is my house. I live here with my children. And the family comes to visit)", as a former Moroccan soldier did . Hannah and her husband bought two houses in Fez. Their place to live is not a "beautiful house" compared to the guest house they intended to open. Christina, an American resident, exclaimed that she was " more comfortable here [i.e. in a medina house] than in some places in the New City." Since a house is a place to live, inhabitants generally undertake works to improve its functionality (cf. supra p. 100). They also buy electric devices such as a fridge or a washing machine. Jawad installed a Western toilet because his father had surgeries and couldn't use the Moroccan bathroom anymore. Managers of construction companies asserted that they first of all looked at the functionality of the house to propose changes in the architectural plans. Antoine took pleasure in finding new functions to useless rooms such as junk rooms. Abdelhay on the one hand promoted an authentic way of furnishing, as he disliked foreign residents furnishing in a Western way. On the other hand, he was not opposed to the introduction of washing machines or gas stoves in houses, for these are "functional." The architecture of the house is an element to make it comfortable. Philippe, an art historian, argued that "it would be impossible to live in a house with low ceilings. You cannot live in a room 2.5 meters wide out of 8 meters long, with a ceiling at 2 meters high. But you live easily if the ceiling is 7 meters high." A lot of inhabitants underlined the cosy and comfortable aspect of their house. Cosy then means intimate (possibility to enclose oneself in a private space), Western (addition of comfort), inviting (the salon with the chimney during winter time), comfortable, charming and quiet. For instance, Emma found her house cosy because " I don't have bedrooms on
234 that lower level [i.e. ground floor] and I'm very happy not to have bedroom there because it is much a busy place. The bedrooms are on the upper level only."
Few informants provided the house with a temporal quality. Contrary to its importance during the works (cf. supra p.107), oldness is not a main quality of houses. Moroccan informants usually complained about the oldness of their house and all the inconveniences and maintenance work it involved. Foreigners generally knew little about the history of their house. Gigi didn't look for more information about her house while she knew its importance – at least the importance in her eyes. To know that the house was about 260 years old was enough for her. Loïc admitted he was unable to tell any story about his house. He knew what the former owners told him. The house was called " Essada " (i.e. happiness) before and belonged to a family of weavers. But it had been abandoned in the late 1980s. He also knew the house had a garden that had been sold in the 1940s. While he was eager to gather any information about the house’s history, he didn't prove very pro active, either. Owners did not know much because there was usually "nothing special to say" about a "fairly new house" or a "house without history," except that after the death of one of the parents, the children decided to sell it and to move to the New City. Jean Pierre, a French guest house owner, declared that "[a]pparently, this house has no history. I didn't read anything about it in any book. I don't think there were any philosophers, sultans, and so on, who left a trace. I only know it belonged to shopkeepers. It belonged to the Bennani, a famous and widespread family but I don't have more information. According to the builder, the house is 420 years old." Many foreigners contented themselves with the information and the date that the builder, the former owners or the traditional notary gave them. Most of the time, they gathered information thanks to the former owners who came back to visit the house or through neighbours. Kate recalled that "about 6 or 7 years ago, oh no, 4 years ago, someone knocked on the door. It was an old man, and he asked to come in and see the house. It is common for Moroccans just to be curious. We usually don't let them in, because it is not great for the guests. So we said 'Sorry. We don't allow people to come in and look.' He said 'No, no, I'm the grandson of the men who built this house.' And he gave the name. And I knew that was correct. 'Oh, marhababick [i.e. welcome], come on in.' And it was wonderful because he walked around, he was an old man, and he told me the history of every room. 'I remember we tiled the courtyard in 1923 for my sister's wedding, and she spent her wedding night in this suite.' In my office, he laughed 'It is so funny it is your office, this is always where I studied.' He showed me another place 'Oh here, I fell down the stairs and broke my arm'." However, others such as Abdelhaq, a Morocco French guest house owner, didn't believe what he
235 had heard about his house. "I do not trust stories I'm told about this house. I heard 25 of them. So, none holds water." Few owners showed interest in the age and the past of their house. Jean Marc, a French guest house owner, was among the rare owners to know the history of his house built in 1866 by one of Hassan I’s son in law. Three generations of qadi (i.e. judge) inhabited the house. Jean Marc bought it from the biggest khli' (i.e. dry meat) producers in Fez. Simon, another French guest house owner, declared that his house was "a link with a past period of time that inspires me respect and attractiveness, but no regret." He was much more interested in "the ingredients in the house that allow learning from the past in order to draw the future." For the few owners looking for information about their house, the young age of a house makes research easier because written documents exist, the neighbours knew the family and the builders might even be still alive. Marie, a French tourist accommodation owner, admitted that she "traced [the history of her house] back up to the first owners. The house was built in 1915. Then, it was bought by the Hotel de France on Batha square. So this house was sold to the hotel by the grandfather. When the hotel stopped any activity, the grandfather bought the house back. And then he sold it to another family from whom I bought it." To date the house, inhabitants referred to the style of the house and its decoration. For instance, the acanthus leave on the columns is typical of the Alaouite style, while the door paintings go back to a Merinid style. Or they referred to the history of the neighbourhood because, as Antoine said: "Starting from the Qaraouyine, the medina developed by slides trough the time. It means we know that such neighborhood, R'Cif, Bab Guissa or Cherrablyene, was built at a certain time. So that in Batha and Ziat areas, you find house aged less than 100 year old". But the general problem brought up by Guy, a French tourist accommodation owner, is that " [w]e don't know! The neighbourhood goes back to the 17 th century, the fountain zelij [i.e. mosaic] is less than a century old and the windows with a upper half circle are typical of the 19 th century. And the balcony rather seems to belong to the 17 th century. This blurs the inscription of the house in a period of time and in a style." Finally, many informants insisted on the necessary preservation of the traditional or authentic quality of their house. 144 Hassan was looking for the preservation of authenticity in traditional houses of the medina. As Olivier, a Belgian resident, said, the authenticity of his house "goes beyond the bricks. It has a deep history." Gigi asserted that her house is traditional because of its architectural structure "with the patio and the four sides, and the bartal [i.e. alcove opened on the patio] with the wall fountain. The basic pattern of the house is the square, and the structure is
144 For a discussion of the terms "tradition" and "authenticity", cf. supra p. 107.
236 enclosed: you are shut into a square and there are few openings to the outside. Symmetry is also traditional. Subsequently, tradition is found in the way the house works. There is always somebody at home. It is rare when there is nobody. There is always at least one woman at home. And, finally, you find tradition in the furniture: banquettes, chests, low round tables. You find this in almost every house." Jawad described his house not as traditional but as a mix between tradition and modernity. To him, "in a traditional house, it is not compulsory to have a fountain but you find the same things: two rooms f sefli [i.e. on the ground floor] and the foqi [i.e. upper floor]. […] Moreover, you see the way houses are built: ceilings are far [i.e. high]. You close the salon doors and it is like night. And the walls are very thick. It means you cannot hear noises from the outside." Jawad claimed his house is not a flat as it extends on two floors (with the rooftop terrace). However, there is no fountain in the patio (just a tap), no mosaic, no carved and/or painted plaster , no "pure Moroccan things," as he said.
5.6.2. The heritage quality
Heritage is among the qualities that informants allocated to houses. The house may be a familial, a personal, an economic or a cultural heritage. A Moroccan teacher and his brother made of their familial house – a familial heritage ( warth ) – an economic heritage by turning it into a home stay. Evelyne excluded the house from her economic heritage. "When I'm in France, sometimes, I evaluate my economic situation. Even when I talk with friends, I never include the house in my economic heritage. I do not include it because given the Moroccan geopolitics, we don't know what may happen tomorrow. I know I may lose the house from one day to the other. So, I include the house into my intellectual heritage if you want. The house is a cultural heritage, intellectual, and personal." Amal, a Ziyarates landlady, declared that her house was a cultural heritage ( turāth ) because of its location in a medina listed by UNESCO. However, her house was not a familial heritage (warth) , as she bought it with her husband in 2002. According to Amélie, although her house is relatively recent, "it is a heritage because it is located in the medina of Fez and it belongs to a whole. It is an additional piece to the entire structure of the medina, and it respects the tradition." Other inhabitants stressed the fact that their house belonged to the Arab Andalus architecture to explain the (cultural) heritage quality. Antoine also defined his house as heritage because it dates back to "a past and bygone time. Also, if we wanted to build the same today, it would cost a fortune. Even a small house like this one
237 [i.e. his house]. In that sense, my house is a piece of heritage. My uncle worked with the Historical Monuments in France. He rebuilt a castle and followed the Historical Monuments norms. He had to use the same materials and the same way of working as those of the period of time he was restoring. But the amount of materials, wood or slate, is not infinite. So materials are rare and their price is high." In addition to oldness, price and scarcity, Antoine stressed the heritage quality of a house through the respect of preservation rules. Gigi clearly presented her house as a heritage because of its exceptionality, uniqueness and originality. "I found what the house concealed from us. Well, the house didn't hide anything. Everything was at our disposal. But I think I'm the only one to know it so well. I'm the first and only one in a long time. So, yes, I'm the heir, between quotation marks, of knowledge. I'm among the few to consider having a heritage in the shape of the patio of my house. It is a unique richness. […] According to me, it is an extraordinary house, in the deep meaning of the term. When I see the amount of knowledge and culture that was put into this house, I bow to them. " Others underlined the representativeness of their house as heritage. Antoine specifically located the heritage quality of his house in the architectural decoration. "In fact, the house as such is not heritage. Heritage decorates the house. It appears in the know how of work guilds, it reflects the period of time during which it was built. If you have the same house but without zelij [i.e. mosaic], without carved plasters, without paintings, what is the interest for the medina to be listed as a World Heritage site?" Emma considered her house as a cultural heritage "because it still demonstrates this kind of intimacy of the house, which has to do with the patio particularly, the little windows I talked about, where the people, and the Moroccan women before them, could look outside without being seen. It creates mystery. I don't have those beautiful windows, the wooden ones, because my house is so simple. I don't have beautiful pieces. I don't have a lot of paintings on the woodwork. Because this is just a simple house, this is not a palace, it is an ordinary house." The heritage quality may not be obvious, and may need some time to appear. Sarah, a French resident, declared that she didn’t really care about heritage when she was looking to buy a house. "The heritage side didn't influence me, didn't appeal to me until I purchased a house. I noticed some houses were more traditional than others but, I mean, it didn't hit me. And now I'm starting the restoration works, I'm going to try to come back to a vanished traditional aspect. But I'm not going to do justice to each nail, to each raw plug". Loïc stated shortly after he had settled in Fez that his house was not a heritage, even if he knew he was living in an "exceptional house that represents a culture and a period of time." Some months later, he said that his house was "part of heritage. This ryad should be shared because it is part of heritage and should be at the disposal of everyone". This emphasis on heritage does not simply have romantic or humanistic roots, however.
238 As Frederica, a Spanish resident, critically added, tourist accommodation owners develop a discourse about their house as heritage because " the tourist is looking for a discourse about heritage. "
5.6.3. Qualities and heritage
Informants allocated several kinds of qualities to their house, that is to say adjectives used to qualify specific features of houses, or entire houses. These qualities related to their architecture, economic side, functionality and comfort, beauty, life, exceptionality and uniqueness, representativeness, authenticity and tradition, age, spiritual aspect or heritage quality. Informants generally evoked the importance of the functional quality (to have a comfortable house) while the temporal and economic qualities more than often appeared as burdens. This overview of qualities leads to several remarks. Firstly, heritage is only one quality among others allocated to houses, and is often linked to another quality of the house such as exceptionality, oldness, scarcity or representativeness. It doesn't make of heritage a supra and essential quality which crowns the experience of a house or a secondary quality coming after the real qualities of the house had been stressed. It rather shows the bundle of qualities that houses display and the embededness of the heritage quality with others. 145 As Keane (1997, 2005) argues, objects have attributes (or holds), suggest qualities and invite to use them. These attributes are co present, are bundled, with other attributes even if these latter haven’t emerged – their emergence is not compulsory. Other qualities than heritage are also preferably bundled with others, such as the comfortable with the economic, the traditional with the old, the good condition with the lively, and the beautiful with the exceptional. The assertion that heritage is not a supra quality doesn't contradict or weaken the statement according to which heritage emerges from a "plus of attention" as I argue in the next chapter. A supra quality is allocated after all the other qualities have been unveiled and it "cancels" or erases these qualities for being less important, less essential. However, a plus of attention results in the allocation of a quality that is not exclusive and could change in time. For example, a house bought for its quality of beauty may become an economic object whose purpose is to bring money to its owner. This latter then "forgets" the beauty quality of the house in favour of the economic one. This happened to Ruth after she suffered a lot during the construction works. "I watch the house trough the eyes of the clients who say ‘Oh, it is wonderful here!’, and I tell myself ‘Yes, it is wonderful.’ But I also see… a lot of suffering inside. It was 2.5 years of nightmare."
145 As Berque (2010) shows, numerous scholars made of contemplation – beyond necessity and use – the condition for landscape to exist.
239 Finally, if heritage is a quality, the notion of heritage border, as something that separates heritage and non heritage, loses its relevance. On the one hand, Latour (2012) stresses that a border is a passageway, a trial, a test, a place of connection and of differentiation where exchanges heighten rather than a clear cut between distinct areas. On the other hand, and more radically than Latour does, Tornatore (2000) challenges the notion of heritage border by underlining that heritage belongs to various worlds. 146 Instead of investigating how a thing belongs to several worlds, I shed light on the multiple relations with this thing – sometimes within the same world. Due to the multiples holds they offer, to the multiples attention they give and take, things invite to a plurality of attachments. In that view, there is no border between houses and heritage but a different engagement, or relation of attention, with the thing to qualify. 147 As a consequence, it is no more an act of language; the difference between houses and heritage is unique and definitive. A thing is not enclosed into or is strictly defined by its quality of heritage, or any other quality. Informants allocated different qualities to the house according to the situation and according to their interlocutor. If Gigi presented her house as exceptional to the tourists, she complained to me about the inconveniences of the house. In that context, the house doesn't cross a border, is not located on one or the other side of the border, but offers a bundle of possible relations and engagement with it.
146 Gibson (1979) also suggests a possible solution to explain the belonging of hertiage to several world. Following his idea of media, surfaces and substance, I propose that houses are subtances, that is to say a relatively persistent layout having a distinctive shape and a non homogeneous texture as well as specific properties. 147 In Ingold’s (2011) view, a thing is not delianated and contained within a perimeter against a surrounding environement (a circle) connected to other things by a line. On the contrary, things are tissues of lines without any inside or outside, trails of movement, trajectories of life.
240 5.7. Attachment
On the basis of this investigation of relations with houses, I draw three concluding remarks. Firstly, rather than an approach focused on individuals – such as with the regimes of engagement (Thévenot, 2006) –, on values – following the axiology of heritage (Heinich, 2009, 2012) – or on the system – in the frame of moral economies (Saxer, 2012) –, I argue that the notion of attachment 148 allows for a better investigation of the relation between human and non human actors, for it puts emphasis on the experience of the situation, 149 and by that token does not favour any component of this situation. This notion, through an approach in terms of "relation with" and not "use of" something, discards approaches based on the instrumentalisation or the aestheticisation of a thing. In the investigation of heritage more particularly, this notion allows taking distance from approaches in terms of heritage making – close to the expert way of institutionalising heritage –, in terms of values giving – close to the definition of heritage as an essence – and in terms of transmission – close to the problematic of heritage production and reception. Tornatore ( 2010) asserts that heritage is a matter of actualisation and attachment rather than a matter of transmission. I rather argue that actualisation and transmission are two different experiences of heritage. Actualisation relates to the recognition and the stabilisation of heritage while transmission refers to its circulation in time and space, once it is stabilised. I here focus on the actualisation – realisation – of heritage in the present, that is to say on "heritage in action." Thévenot (2006) proposes the notion of "regimes of engagement" to study how human actors figure action, engage with one another and their visible or invisible, close or remote, environment. This notion in its multiple variations mainly focuses on human actors and their relations with actions and with other human actors rather than with objects. For instance, in the familial regime, human actors look after their comfort and try to avoid anything threatening their intimacy and privacy. They use objects and customise them according to various intensities of affects. In the regime of planned actions, human actors aim to act efficiently, with responsibility and autonomy.
148 Attachment has been mostly investigated in the fields of psychology (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth and al., 1978) and cognitive sciences (Levine, 1990) as a relation of security between a child and his/her parents. Carrying out its anthropological fieldwork in Morocco, Rosen (1979) referred to the word to describe the possible ties one could develop with other human beings according to his/her personal capacities and his/her cultural resources – the origins (where does one come from), the locality (where does he live, to which land is he currently associated) and the relatedness (to the family, to the Prophet, to a Saint). Also , Barthelemy and Weber (1994) outlined three kinds of love, or attachments, to the Brittany landscape. These attachments correspond to stances activists of that region developed, that is to say the defence of the ecosystem, the preservation of the living environment, and the preservation of the memory of the place. 149 Inspired by Dewey, Hennion (2007) argues that attachment doesn’t relate to a content but to an experience. Based on his investigation of the passion for music, he states that attachment "could only be experienced, felt – and this includes its own understanding […] to understand attachment is like to find internal, local and partial causes in the seamless fabric of heterogeneous realities. It doesn't aim to add explanations or external interpretations to given realities " (Hennion, id.: 98).
241 They use norms, their intention and willpower to establish plans of action, and objects strengthen these plans. In the regime of justice, human actors qualify and evaluate things and people according to a worth (i.e. reference value or quality) and a common good, namely competition in the market world, efficiency in the industrial world, renown in the opinion world, solidarity in the civic world, trust in the domestic world, or inspiration. Doing so, they try to reach agreements in justice and objects support frameworks of coordination. However, in each chapter of this section, I investigated the relations between human actors and houses – that is to say objects and not actions. The notion of attachment precisely puts emphasis on what human actors care for. In Hennion’s (1993) definition, attachment holds things together, results from an attention – a human actor gives to an object and an attention taken by the object. Senses, affects, expertise, conflicts and justifications and qualities, all these relations show what inhabitants care for and give attention to – that is to say comfort, money, well being, or beauty among others – in their experience of houses. An attachment is not a link, a tie, but is discovered during a test, a trial in Boltanski and Thévenot’s (1991) meaning. As such, attachment mainly relies on a body that feels and experiences, on objects such as the object of attachment or intermediary objects, on systems that act like conventions and mediators, and on collective groups which frame the experience. In Fez, the corporeal capacities, through senses and affects, participate in the relation with houses. Several systems and objects also support the attachment to the house – crafts elements and traditional materials, work undertaking, the invention and stabilisation of a vocabulary, the implementation of rules, writings and movies about Fez. Finally, residents, members of institutions, merchants and antique dealers create or gather in associations, institutions or informal groups in which one learns and receives information and advice. This focus on experience however doesn't mean the absence of link with the past. One needs to train to learn how to experience an attachment. Also, as James (1976) puts it, new experiences combine with former ones and this combination structures the former mass of experiences to extend the known universe.
Secondly, sensual and affective relations are of prime importance to shed light on what people care for. According to Berque (2010) sensitive experiences and representations – and what connects them – are at the basis of humans’ enjoyment of their attachment to the sensitive world. The latter then do not exist without the representations and values that humans project on it. 150 Without making out of senses and affects a condition for the world to be, Dassié (2006) defines the "intimisation" of things as their inclusion into personal memories and their link with socio
150 The sensitive world is "trajective ", which means it is not purely objective or subjective, but is endowed with symbolic and tehcnical systems at the same time it belongs to the biosphere.
242 biographic affects. Through senses and affects, human actors include things into their life, appropriate them and allocate them qualities – some of them being heritage qualities. Kate linked every room of her house to a particular moment in her life. Meriem underlined that somebody else couldn't feel the same affects in the house of her grandparents for this house wouldn't be part of his or her personal history. Gigi based her discovery of the house on her passion for astrology. Moroccan inhabitants evoked memories and personal stories in relation with their house – the fountain taller than the child or the peach tree in the patio. The latter example shows the importance of childhood in the process of intimisation. The end of the "good old days" starts with the end of childhood (Amiotte Suchat and Floux, 2002). Informants were nostalgic of what they had known as children, or what their parents and grandparents had known knew and told them – "I don’t know but I’ve been told that…" As such, they inscribed this bygone time in a fixed temporality and they referred to their childhood as a representative moment of this mythic past. Young informants as well as younger ones – such as Jawad – tended to embellish the time of their childhood. Herzfeld (2005) shows this "longing for the past" passes on through generations. "Structural nostalgia" is a rhetoric nostalgia reproduced from generation to generation and opposes a virtuous past (a simple and healthy life driven by love, generosity, and respect) to an egoistic present. The notion of intimisation also sheds light on the intimate relation between human actors and the thing they appropriate. In this context, intimisation is a double opportunity to affect the object and to be affected by the object. Ruth openly declared that the house called her and bewitched her when she purchased it. Afterwards, the house made her suffer during the restoration works. Ruth was affected by the house, as she affected the house by undertaking major restoration works in it. When informants considered senses and affects as competences, skills, and abilities to give attention to through an experience, they stressed the mutual influence between objects and human actors. Human actors have to meet objects to have their skills developed and upgraded. Affects then lies at the coupling of perception and action (or movement) and are at the base of skilled practices (Ingold, 2011). Aside from their participation to the process of intimisation, senses and affects play a role in the qualification of an object as heritage. According to Berliner (2012: 771), nostalgia is "a set of publicly displayed discourses, practises and emotions where the ancient is somehow glorified" and "a major force driving force in heritage making."151 Dassié (2006) investigate the "patrimonial action by empathy " that occurred after a storm in the Park of Versailles. A feeling of "loss by proxy"
151 Berque (2010) also underlines the importance of nostalgia that he calls the "thirst for nature" in the case of the qualification of the environment as landscape.
243 became a federative emotion and resulted in a collective mobilisation. 152 In Fez, this discourse of sharing pain is obvious among foreigners when they lamented the loss of know how and the collapsing of houses or when they compareed the situation in Fez to what happened in their own country – i.e. the lack of interest of Moroccans in their heritage and the decay of monuments in France in the 1970s. Some informants used nostalgia in their heritage action in the present and for the future. 153 The sensual and affective attachment to their house may give rise to a care for preservation, which contradict the usual denial of heritage skills allocated to non experts. The old women asking Kate not to "do anything crazy with it [i.e. the house]," the disappointment of David and Fettah about their preservation actions, the complaints about the disappearance of know how are among examples of care for the preservation of houses. Also, members of the Ministry of Tourism base their discourses on the past Golden Age of Fez in order to attract tourists and to promote Fez as a cultural and spiritual capital of Morocco. Organisers of the Sacred Music Festival also play on nostalgia when announcing a special night of Andalus music in the medina to make this music resonates in houses "as it was before." Tayyibi and Laïla Skalli, two Moroccan architects, plead for the use of traditional knowledge in earth architecture to built ecological houses in cities. Foreigners restore their house "in its original state." The sensual and affective relations with houses also question the usual opposition between experts and non experts. For instance, World Heritage policies, and heritage policies in general, focus on technical aspects – which techniques and materials to use in the preservation of such element of heritage –, on economic aspects – project of preservation aiming at alleviating poverty – or on political aspects – principles of good governance and participation of local populations in the implemented projects of preservation. Their integrated policies and strategies miss both the sensory and the affective aspects of heritage, considering them as unimportant. But contrary to what Heinich (2009) asserts about the absence of affects in the work of experts – assertion Tornatore (2010) nuances by characterising the work of experts as a game between detachment and involvement – experts do have affects (cf. supra p. 212). I then argue that, in affective and sensual terms, houses – taken as heritage or not – constitute a common focus of attention to experts, non experts, autodidact experts, Moroccans and foreigners.
152 Collins (2008) even speaks of a collective redemption through heritagisation and the emotions linked to the entry of an element in a state of exception. 153 On the other hand, in his novel The City of Brass, Jouiti criticises nostalgia and the recall of the past in the building and the promotion of modern and global Arab cities and argued the global city cannot be a city from the past because this latter doesn't exist. The city of the past is nothing but an imagined one, a living myth that encloses Moroccans in the walls of nostalgia, and produces "cities that functions as imprisoning architectures of memory" (Pieprzak, 2007: 190). The fixation on the past, more than poverty, closes future opportunities.
244 Finally, senses and affects instigate the development of knowledge to both experts and non experts. The love for the house pushes informants to look for information about heir house, and the memories invite owners to tell anecdotes. This relationship between affects and knowledge is obvious in Milton's (2002) view. Knowledge doesn't come from the transmission of mental representations but from a capacity to treat the environment as a source of information. In this context, emotions constitute "devices to help us discover what the world is like" (Milton 2002: 59). Emotions help focusing the attention on something particular in the environment, and they affect the treatment of information and its impact on memory and knowledge. Milton thus links affects, valuation and knowledge in the way human actors engage with their environment.
However senses and affects don't automatically and necessarily lead to heritage (Dassié, 2006). I defend the idea whereby the senses, affects, qualities, justifications and actions are possible components in the actualisation of heritage. On the basis of this assertion, I shed light on the continuum between houses and heritage, following what James (1979) calls the conjunctive relations or continuous transition. For instance, informants mentioned a sensual relation with both heritage – the sounds of gushing water in the street, smells in the medina – and houses – touching the mosaic, seeing the beauty of the house. Also, in the second section, I underlined the characteristics informants associated with heritage in Fez. Ubiquity was a first characteristic, for heritage is everywhere in the medina. Informants also spoke of scarcity , as heritage is unique and exceptional. At the same time, heritage is typical of the city, of the Arab Andalus style. Authenticity appeared when informants mentioned the link with origins, identity and the entirety of heritage in Fez. This entirety is close to a characteristic of life , for heritage in Fez is still alive and is characterised by a specific spirit. Informants also mentioned spirituality , beauty , and oldness . Some informants mentioned the expertise needed for heritage making, under the form of knowledge, rules to observe and necessary distance. Finally, they stressed the transmission and the cost of heritage preservation. When talking about houses as home, informants mentioned some similar qualities. Houses are alive . Gigi underlined the exceptionality of her house. Amal declared her house was heritage because of its location in the medina. Hassan insisted on the respect of the rules during the construction works. Others underlined the typicality of their house or its authenticity . The economic quality was also brought up as houses cost a lot, and materials to restore them are expensive. Fettah mentioned the spiritual quality with the example of fountains or architecture partly explained by religious reasons. Moroccan inhabitants also mentioned the transmission of the house as a familial heritage. The list of shared criteria shows that the house as home doesn't exclude the house as
245 heritage. A building can be qualified at once or through time as a home and as a heritage, an individual can at once see in his house a home and/or a heritage. The "home" quality is however not similar to the "heritage" quality allocated to a house – in the sense of building. Both are inscribed in different bundles of qualities. 154 Also, what distinguishes the house as home and the house as heritage is a plus of attention. 155 Some informants qualified their house as heritage because of its oldness but Jawad declared that "Moulay Idriss [i.e. the main shrine] is 12 centuries old. My house is less than a century old. It is not the same." Abdelaziz, a Morocco French guest house owner, also took oldness to distinguish his house as home from heritage buildings. "The neighbouring house is a ruin. Some three years ago, there were elements of heritage inside, such as painted wood ceilings. They were more than 200 years old. But in my house, in terms of heritage? I don't know. It is a 70 or 80 year old house only..." Abdelaziz added a distinction based on spirituality. "The Bouanania [i.e. a Koranic school] is a beautiful building, but I couldn't live in it. I'm not interested in living in a museum. […] The Bouanania is very loaded historically. The gabs [i.e. carved plasters] are wonderful and they carry something through time. But our palace doesn't carry much except the quality of the work realised less than 100 years ago by talented craftsmen. But there is nothing sacred or religious in this building." Heritage is not a supra quality but is distinguished from a home by a "something more " than a home quality, by a different attention given to the house. I then formulated the hypothesis whereby the plus leading to heritage generally comes from the association of affects of loss, disappearance or threat; qualities related to time (oldness, tradition), purity (authenticity) and the object (its scarcity or typicality); and actions or justifications of preservation and transmission. This by no way lists the ingredients for heritage to appear, but it gathers what informants mentioned most when talking of and acting around heritage. None of them is specific to heritage or is enough for heritage to blossom. For instance, a feeling of disappearance is not enough, as about 8 houses collapse per year in the medina, and Moroccans do not make them, or houses in decay, into a heritage. However, they shed light on how inhabitants come to qualify houses as heritage.
154 As the theoretical overview in the introduction suggests, qualities of houses as home rather relate to sheltering, providing security, being furnished and decorated among others. 155 Berque (2010) rathers speaks of a different ability to taste the sensitive occurrences. Taking the specific example of landscape, he focus on this taste that consists in giving a price to what has no price to what those who cannot see as landscape. As such, human beings actively participate to the realisation of landscape : he must have the proper taste to bring the emotion or affect realted to the judgement of beauty.
246 6. Heritage as a fiction
6.1. Introduction
"I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything." Vedder from the music band Pearl Jam when they received the Grammy Awards for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1996
In the fourth section, I showed that houses are not always heritage. In the preceding section, I investigated how houses may indeed become heritage. In the present section, I focus on what heritage actually is in Fez, for heritage is something, and even many things, in this city. Fez is a city in which many heritage objects, discourses and practices spread out and circulate in their own style. Up to now, I focused on houses as heritage. I also evoked the World Heritage label, heritage as an argument in conflicts or in the promotion of the city, heritage as a definition and a category among members of institutions, heritage as an object of research for scholars. But how do we make sense of these various heritages? In order to explain the different definitions of and involvement with heritage, some scholars refer to the concept of dissonant heritage (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996; Bruce and Creighton, 2006). Sharing this idea of different values and meanings allocated to heritage but reducing the inherent dissonance, Tornatore (2000) defines heritage as a "boundary object" 156 linking different worlds and leading either to the cooperation between or to conflicts between them . Chevallier (2003) for his part talks of various kinds of heritagisation , namely conservation, 157 appropriation, 158 and revivals or revitalisations. 159 Another solution to make senses of the multiplicity of heritage is to define it as a "flagship word" 160 (Perelman, 1989), a buzzword, a catchword or an "empty concept" 161 (Boyer, 1986) that informants seem unable to define but that scholars assume to refer to specific phenomena. I, in turn, wonder rather which content heritage takes in situation. Based on Boltanski and
156 Boundary objects are "objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites" (Star and Griesemer, 1989: 393). 157 The change in the status of an object thought designation, authentication and appropriation of an object as heritage. 158 The implementation of specific preservation processes for heritage to become a tool in the development of a territory. 159 The inclusion of an element of heritage in the contemporary market and/or cultural economy. 160 Muddled notions such as justice, pleasure or beauty that have the power to sketch and induce ideals (Perelman, 1989). 161 According to Boyer (id.), these empty concepts are found in common discourses – under the form of general and abstract assertions – in gossips – under the form of singular cases – and in specialists' discourses – under the form of statements linking general principles and singular cases. In Fez, the "empty concept" of heritage is present in these three kinds of discourses. Moroccan inhabitants speak of heritage in the street, many inhabitants associate UNESCO with a myth and members of institutions are busy with heritage.
247 Thévenot's (1991) notion of worlds and on Latour's (2012) notion of mode of existence, I refer to the notion of form as what remains similar through a succession of transformations and circulations between localised situations (Latour, id.). I then draw a repertory of forms of heritage I encountered in Fez. This repertory leads to the hypothesis of heritage as a fiction – the "heritage fiction". This fiction allows asserting that there is something like heritage, a spirit of heritage, 162 which differs from two other relations with the past and presences of the past in the present, namely memory and history. It also gives room to the numerous terms meaning heritage in various languages – patrimoine, héritage, heritage, patrimony, legacy, warth , turāth, athār – without giving the precedence of one over the others. Finally, the heritage fiction encompasses the forms of heritage. Each form of heritage is distinct but all of them share the similar features that compose the contemporary heritage fiction. This fiction is not finite and written in stone, it is not ontologically stabilised. I shall finish this section by describing the circulation and the anchorage of the heritage fiction in specific situations. This fiction, once it is fixed in a medium – label, tool, listed site, house – is being circulated – by the media, the work of experts, written texts – and anchors in other situations through a translation or a qualification process. This description opens the question of the local and the global through the notions of circulation and anchorage. I then argue that the local and the global are qualities of what is located and framed in situations in the first case, and what is intensively circulated in the second case.
162 Heritage is not an exclusive word and I do not aim to defend one definition or one meaning of the word. I rather use the word "heritage" to refer to a kind of "spirit of heritage" and its indeterminate content when it not anchored in a situation.
248 6.2. Various forms of heritage 163
6.2.1. Heritage as an object to preserve
Numerous international campaigns of heritage preservation took place in Fez (UNESCO in 1985, UNDP in 1992, World Bank in 1996, Millenium Challenge Corporation in 2010) alongside many conferences – among the most recent ones, " Valorisation du patrimoine culturel de la méditerranée " ("Promotion of the Mediterranean Cultural Heritage") in January 2013, " La médina de Fès, 30 ans après l'inscription sur la liste du Patrimoine Mondial " ("The Fez medina, 30 years after its nomination on the World Heritage list") in May 2011, " Fonctions et usages du patrimoine : leçons du terrain " (Functions and uses of heritage: lessons from the field") in November 2011, or "Rencontre internationale Fès 2003 : patrimoine et développement durable dans les centres historiques urbains " ("International Meeting Fez 2003: heritage and sustainable development in urban historical centres") in December 2003. Preservation is also at the core of a wide debate about the terminology to use. In the third section (cf. supra p.102), I mentioned that informants used several terms – such as renovation, restoration, rehabilitation, preservation, conservation, and improvement – to speak of the works they undertook in their house. To this, one could add protection, safeguard, or renewal. Each term is connected to a different idea of the kind of work to carry out, the techniques and the materials to use. Furthermore, informants did not agree on a unique definition or a unique way to undertake works. I evoked the debates about the use of concrete and cement in the construction works (cf. supra p. 104). I gave voice to the opposed view of work undertaking between Moroccan builder workers – who redo structures and buildings identically – and foreigners – who insist on the importance of patina and age. Another main topic related to heritage as an object to preserve is the listing of the causes of degradation. Many informants mentioned the river under Fez as a major cause in the degradation of houses and some added an earthquake as a possible disaster for the city. Tayyibi, the former ENA director, and his Facebook friends tried to find people responsible for the decay and the lack of action. They listed human actors – e.g. politicians, inhabitants and rural migrants –, historical features – e.g. Protectorate, rural exodus – and general reasons – e.g. modernity and contemporary architecture – to account for the decay. In their view, "[d]ecision makers have to be aware of the value of heritage and to increase the number of restoration and rehabilitation actions." Sometimes, they criticised a specific institution. "What a misery! Is ADER in charge of it?" or "Ouch, but what
163 In this chapter, I also base my descriptions on writings (academic articles, reports, books) and on websites about Fez.
249 is UNECO doing? I thought Fez was a World Heritage for humanity! UNESCO can gather money and appoint responsible and aware people to restore those poor houses!" Finally, Facebook friends accused architects. As one put it, "I always wonder about the role of architects in the preservation of heritage, because what matters, ultimately, is real and concrete action." In the 1992 UNDP report about the safeguard of the Fez medina, the authors identify physical and social causes of heritage degradation in the medina. Physical causes concern problems with regards to foundations, excessive weight on a wall or a pillar, and dampness due to rainwater, leaking sewing pipes or water used for domestic purposes. The lack of interest and money of Moroccan inhabitants constitute the main social causes of degradation. On the basis of these statements, the authors recommend various actions such as the bolstering of structures to reinforce bearing elements and/or the rehabilitation of woodwork, pipes and, water and electricity supplies. In their view, only major works on the surface of the house have to do with heritage – except in heritage houses in which any work is of a heritage sensitive nature. The authors finally assert that the safeguard involves the improvement of access to the medina, the test of the project in a reference zone, the rehabilitation of traditional buildings and houses, the transfer of polluting activities outside the city walls, the improvement of public services and amenities, a better organisation of institutions, and the restoration of historic heritage. All the elements – houses, economic and craft activities, road design – are intertwined, which makes the safeguard more complex and involves a strong organisation, clear information, specific and accurate aims, awareness and consultation. Heritage maintenance is supposed to be a concern and a practice of experts such as architects and archaeologists. The idea of a necessary knowledge in order to undertake a proper preservation reinforces this relationship between preservation and experts. In Fez, the numerous reports edited by UNESCO, the UNDP and the World Bank are typical of this trend of heritage preservation which firstly involves the gathering of information about the monument to preserve and its surrounding, and secondly the recommendation of actions as to how to preserve it properly. As such, the work of the Inspector of Historical Monuments and his team, geared toward the respect of rules and the preservation of the structure and the architectural elements of houses, is inscribed in this form of heritage. Sometimes, these experts bypass the definition of heritage and focus on the restoration process instead. In the 1999 report on the restoration of Dar Adiyel (i.e. a palace in Fez), the word "heritage" is taken for granted and the authors focus on the organisation, the funding, the techniques and the success of the restoration work. The use of local know how and materials, the respect of norms and works done by the book, the cooperation between Morocco and Italy are presented as key elements in the success of this project.
250 More generally, sciences of preservation obviously aim at reproducing heritage in time. They focus on the perpetuation and inheritance of heritage elements through preservation and transmission. As such, they try to avoid the disappearance of these elements.
6.2.2. Heritage as a daily object
Heritage is present in the form of houses. To Moroccans, the house is at best a familial heritage transmitted through legacy. This kind of inheritance is somehow similar in the World Heritage site of Chichén Itzà in Mexico (Breglia, 2005). This site is the "family business" of Maya guards. "[T]rough the inheritance of job positions in the zone, the antiguos [i.e. Maya guards] have, in a sense, kept this World Heritage in the family." Indigenous people, by their presence and their occupation, then play a role in the production and the reproduction of heritage even if they do not see it as such. As Gigi said, "we are inside, we are integrated with it [i.e. heritage]!" Buob (2009) also points out the gap between the heritage discourse about coppers – typical craft making objects such as teapots – and the daily work of coppers in Fez. He aims to investigate and record the coppers' knowledge and know how, noticing that coppers do not match with the image of traditional Moroccan craftsmen. They widely use mechanical techniques, practice sub contracting, and suffer from the division of labour and its flexibility. In other words, coppers generally hold a limited knowledge and know how and content themselves with repeating the same task every day. They are a far cry from considering their work as one of heritage preservation. Following Fabre (2009) and Latour (2012), one could say that habits create continuity in the courses of action, veil some affordances and qualities – the heritage quality among them – of things surrounding human actors, and reduce the attention given to the environment. Only works to undertake – or any trial – remind inhabitants they have to give attention to their house. As such, they provide a feeling of immanence. Houses in the medina appear to have always been there, even the more recent ones. In their discourses, inhabitants date the oldness of the medina to 1200 years. In the view of many inhabitants', no major change has happened since then. Houses are old – 1200 year old – or new – less than 100 year old. Also, the entire history of architecture is reduced to the typical Arab Andalus or Merinid style.
6.2.3. Heritage as an object of research
Scholars in the social sciences face the problem of a difficult – or impossible – definition of
251 heritage (Lowenthal, 1998; Smith, 2006), due to its proliferation, the rising number of heritage categories, and the extension in time and space of the elements it includes. It doesn't prevent scholars – and other professionals of heritage and culture – to undertake researches and to think about heritage. As a Tayyibi's Facebook friend stressed, "rebuilding heritage involves knowing the techniques, details, knowledge. It is more a matter of art than of architecture. It is a matter of sociology, anthropology and history. It is a matter of reading books, of being at the same time an artist and an intellectual, not only an artist or an expert, but also an intellectual. It is a matter of looking for former techniques, encouraging the repetition of the same ways and gestures. With this, love and perseverance, we'll manage to preserve the soul of houses." This intellectual work has been partly done in Fez. The Protectorate period (1912 1956) was an intense time of collecting knowledge and know how in order to preserve them in museums and writings (cf. supra p. 35). The Indigenous Arts Department showed to be very active in this task. One of its directors, Prosper Ricard (1920 1935) presented himself as the Savior of the Moroccan traditional art. The journal Hepéris collected (and still does) ethnographic researches about crafts and their history, their techniques and their social context. In 1926, Galloti wrote Le Jardin et la maison arabe au Maroc with the aim of preserving this architecture. The photographer Vogel and the architect Laprade helped him in this undertaking. Terrasse and Hainaut ( 2006 [1924]), for their part, rather focused on decorative arts in Morocco. More recently, Revault, Golvin and Amahan (1985, 1989, 1992) published three books dedicated to the traditional architecture and the famous houses in Fez while Paccard (1981) wrote about traditional architectural decorations. Buob (2009) focuses on coppers and the manufacture of copper and brass object through the paradigmatic example of the tea set. McGuinness and Mouhli (2012) investigate the restoration of patio houses in the medina and McGuinness (2010) sheds light on the Fez Sacred Music Festival. Girard (2006a, 2006b) studies the link between crafts and tourism on the one hand, and crafts and the French Protectorate on the other. Skalli (2007) writes about the Sufi tradition in Fez and in Morocco more generally. Bouziane, El Maliki and Hakik (2010) investigate the perceptions and knowledge Moroccans have of their heritage and I myself focus on the way people inhabit houses in a World Heritage site.
6.2.4. Heritage as a definition and a category
Heritage experts aim to make sense of the cascades of acts, events, discourses about heritage. To this end, they establish definitions and categories – immutable mobiles in Latour's (1999) words – that are formalised and stabilised in their writings. As a consequence, categories and
252 definitions may circulate and remain constant from one site to the other, from one situation to the other. These immutable mobiles don't refer to any particular case but they allow for the correlation of remote places and times. The 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage , and the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention offer examples of stable definitions and categories of heritage. In order to be listed, a cultural site must fit one of these three main categories and satisfy at least one of the 6 cultural criteria as well as to meet the qualities of authenticity and integrity. These criteria and qualities are described in the Operational Guidelines. The 1972 Convention distinguishes three cultural heritage categories, namely monuments, groups of buildings, and sites. Each of them is defined in the first article of the 1972 Convention. 164 The main category of "groups of buildings" includes the subclass of urban centres, which is itself divided into dead city (archaeological sites), living historic city, and new city of the 20 th century. And among living historic cities, we find the city with an evolution feature (witness of successive steps in the history) and historical centres (old city included in a modern city). Fez belongs to the latter category. In Fez, Hassan works with official categories of houses and of heritage as published by UNESCO – cultural and natural heritage, tangible and intangible heritage – or by the Ministry of Culture. For instance, the Moroccan laws 22 80 and 19 05 modified by the dahir 1 06 102 define what can be listed as natural or cultural heritage. Also, the second volume of the 1981 Master Plan defines 7 categories of heritage objects in the medina, namely shrines, dwellings (palaces, ryad, houses), funduk (caravanserai), the traditional water supply, green spaces (gardens, orchards), the urban landscape (streets, squares) and the city walls. In the report about the restoration of the palace Dar Adiyel (Touri, Hassani and Barbato, 1999), the authors mention that the medina is a World Heritage site and they evoke tropes of this listing which are being taken for granted. Fez is an imperial city, a spiritual city, a museum city, a lively city, an intellectual city, a jewel of Muslim culture. The palace is defined as a cultural heritage because of its beauty and its architectural specificity – it belongs to the Merinid style even if it was built at the end of the 17 th century and integrates architectural elements of that century, such as a very simple architectural decoration.
164 "monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science; sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view" (Article 1).
253 6.2.5. Legal heritage
Lawyers develop means to talk about facts, to fill the distance with specific cases and occurrences. Also, the legal discourse doesn't aim to instigate empathy with victims or at the objective truth but at linking facts – e.g. a preservation project – to principles – e.g. property. In Fez, and in Morocco more generally, the Ministry of culture is responsible for the establishment and the respect of laws related to heritage. The same law 22 80 specifies the procedure to list a building as a national heritage and it formulates the consequences of this listing. For instance, a listed building cannot be demolished or modified without the authorisation of public authorities. Moreover, public authorities have to fund any work deemed useful or necessary to the preservation of a listed building. For instance, in March 2013, King Mohammed VI signed two conventions initiating programmes of preservation in Fez. The Moroccan government will allocate 285.5 million Dh (about 25.5 million €) for the rehabilitation of historical buildings and 330 million Dh (about 30 million €) for the treatment of houses threatened with ruin. These works undertaken by public authorities and international organisations raise the question of expropriation. In Fez, the Millennium Challenge Corporation project dedicated to caravanserai includes a programme of land settlement and relocation – headed by Moroccan scholar Ahmed Bouziane. 165 Catherine Rochant, the French architect leading this project, underlined the importance of this study defining the people to relocate and to indemnify. She also stressed that this programme was based on relocation rules as defined by the World Bank. Without these rules, there would have been simple expropriations following the Moroccan law. The 1992 UNDP report also raised the issue of expropriation on the basis of public utility, which exists in Morocco in the context of the promotion of rural lands and in the case of tourist promotion. But there is nothing in the law concerning expropriation in the case of the safeguard and the rehabilitation of old cities except a general legislation ( dahir 6/05/1982) that involves a long procedure and the rules of urbanism ( dahir 31/07/1952). In both cases, expropriation concerns any real estate property except religious, public and military buildings as well as cemeteries. Within the civil society, 166 Moroccan architects, doctors, journalists, and collectors created the association Casamémoire in 1995. It aims to legally safeguard the cultural heritage of the 20 th century in Morocco and in Casablanca more specifically. For instance, the association organises a heritage day once a year 167 and on demand architectural visits of Casablanca. It participates to
165 This document is available in French on http://www.app.ma/uploads/pdf/ENVIRONNEMENT/AFM/PAR%20Version%20finale.pdf 166 Understood as the social civil life organised voluntarily and independently from the State. 167 http://youtu.be/jbg8evxG7 w for a video about the 2012 heritage day in Casablanca.
254 public events such as the Tango Fest in order to raise the awareness of the public opinion, the politicians and the social workers. It also promotes restoration and rehabilitation works – Les abattoirs fabrique culturelle de Casa is one example – and participates to academic research. In Fez, the Moroccan Foundation for Culture and Arts Hadj Abdelkarim Raiss was created in 1999 following the death of Hadj Abdelkarim Raiss, a famous Arab Andalus music player. According to its current director Mohamed Debbagh, the foundation aims to develop scientific research about artistic heritage and to promote any association interested in Andalus cultural and artistic heritage. The foundation participates to the organisation of the Andalus Music Festival in Fez. This private initiative is inscribed in the cultural right of access to and use of heritage as defined by the United Nations 168 and relates to cultural citizenship (Albro, 2005). The relation between cultural or human rights and heritage interests Meskell (2010: 839) who asserts that "applying a framework of universal human rights to resolve heritage conflicts" raises more problems – such as higher expectations from heritage – than it solves. About the World Bank "Fez Medina Rehabilitation Project" (1998 2005), Lafrenz Samuels (2010) argues that linking the human right of poverty reduction and heritage preservation may be fraught. She notices a slippage between rehabilitating buildings and rehabilitating people. In the World Bank final report, medina inhabitants became responsible for the degradation of the medina and members of institution for the failure of the project. Poverty in Morocco became a local problem without any link to the broader political economy structure. Also, according to Radoine (2003), dealing with heritage through the poverty lens won't solve the problem of poverty itself, as it treats the consequences and not the roots of poverty. Poverty should be treated in its own area. Aside from poverty alleviation, Lafrenz Samuels (id.) focuses on the link between property regimes and cultural property. She shows that the World Heritage apparatus attenuates or rejects alternative property regimes, such as the Habous (i.e. public goods belonging to the Ministry of Religious Endowments). This issue of property is an interesting topic in Fez because of the variety of property regimes. According to the UNDP (1992), about 80% of the buildings in the medina are melk (i.e. private property), about 9% are Habous , and about 5% are undivided properties. These various property regimes relate to different safeguard and restoration rules. The Ministry of Religious Endowments is in charge of Habous goods (and nobody can oblige them to restore one of their building) while private owners fall under the official rules of urbanism. Aside from this issue of buildings' property, the nomination on the World Heritage list raises the question of the medina's property. Is the medina a "global public good" (Kaul et al., 1999), that
168 In Morocco, the amazigh language and its use in education, media and public life, the creation of museums, the promotion of crafts are among the cultural rights to heritage as mentioned in a UN report after a mission in 2012 (http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session20/A HRC 20 26 Add2_en.pdf )
255 is to say a good that is non exclusive in its consumption (the World Heritage sites benefits various consumers), non perishable (its consumption doesn't lead to its disappearance, as long as a modicum of maintenance is enforced), whose positive and negative externalities cross borders, generations and populations? Is the medina, because of the World Heritage nomination, because of the presence of foreigners – be they residents, experts or tourists – because of its sustainability, a global public good? While I do not have sufficient information to answer it, I argue this question is of prime interest for a better management of World Heritage sites. Finally, Hassan raised the issue of the legality of the 1972 World Heritage Convention. In his view, "there are no UNESCO policies. It is a convention. It is very limited. In fact, UNESCO is not supposed to intervene directly. It comes to give its opinion about the changes or transformations in a place. It is an association authorised to stake over some problems. But UNESCO doesn't intervene through policies. And the reason is very simple. Its policy, if I may say, that is to say the Convention of World Heritage, is binding on any signatory country. All the states that have signed the convention have to implement and respect it." UNESCO and other international bodies such as the Council of Europe or the Aga Khan Trust, publish conventions and recommendations. None of these legal documents have the value of law. Countries that ratify a convention have the moral engagement to respect and conform to the convention, while recommendations are only general principles that countries are free to follow or not. World Heritage sites are "global" by their nomination on a list, but the nation state remains the base of their production and management. The matters at stake then concern an efficient policy to control those goods, as well as a jurisdictional gap between national and international policies, between national policies and international issues.
6.2.6. Heritage as development tool
Heritage is frequently used in development projects, mainly through tourism. 169 In Morocco, a specific programme is dedicated to heritage in the new "Vision 2020," the national programme of tourism development. In Fez, the Ziyarates home stay programme clearly aims to "ally tourism and
169 Heritage and tourism share several similarities. The emergence of a global concern for heritage conservation aroused together with the expansion of tourism as an international phenomenon (Peleggi, 2002; Morisset and Dormaels, 2011 ). Also, heritage tourism was born after the ‘Grand Tour,’ that is to say the standard itinerary of travel undertaken by upper class Europeans in the period from the late seventeenth century until the mid nineteenth century. Moreover, both result from the Industrial revolution extend slowly to more and more practices and spaces – the all tourism and the all heritage – and can be part of the most radical discourses – destructive tourism and heritage as identity. Tourism and heritage also share a sacred aspect. The three steps defined by Van Gennep in the rite the passage – separation, marginality and liminality, and coming back – are used to study both tourism (Graburn, 1983) and heritage (Wallace, 2006). Finally, as Lazzaroti (2000) argues, both are linked and share a common system of values, the same movement of world ordering. For instance, sustainability is at their core.
256 human development." To house tourists in the medina could help preserve houses through a modest income and then allow inhabitants to remain in the medina. Also, the Moroccan President of the Association of Guest houses, member of the Regional Tourism Council and owner of two guest houses, underlined that guest houses participate to sustainable development, to the preservation of heritage and to the economic development of the medina, by offering more than 1500 jobs. In his view, guest houses are "not a fashion effect, but a rebirth, a conversion." According to an architect working for the municipality, the development of guest houses is both positive and negative. It is positive, because it helps preserving heritage and it is an "economic movement" creating jobs. It is negative, because it brings speculation and owners sometimes do whatever they want in their house, such as building swimming pools inside a living room.
Pic. 31. Ziyarates leaftlet
Hassan, a member of the Inspection of Historical Monuments, didn't oppose tourism and heritage. "The rehabilitation of heritage for tourism is a way to safeguard it. This is what we are doing with the city walls, and it is important for the city. With their valorisation, with their partial reconstruction, they constitute an added value for the city." In his view, "the tourism process should help the city to survive because this process benefits the population. […] Once [monuments and houses] have been safeguarded and protected, it is very important to have tourism. […] Tourism contributes to the local development. It allows people to work. Maybe some projects are not
257 profitable. But among vehicles of local development, there is culture. Tourism and heritage should be an integrated local development as part of a larger strategy." Scholars also address the relation between the UNESCO nomination and tourist development. In Fez, Lahbil Tagemouati (2008) particularly questions the economic value of the medina from the perspective of public and private investments. She bases the measure of the economic value of heritage on the theory of surplus – the difference between what the consumer pays and what the consumer would agree to pay. She comes to the conclusion that if the medina heritage has no price, it has a value. Tourists and experts would agree to pay a fee to visit the medina and preserve this value. Other scholars (Gravari Barbas and Jacquot, 2008) nonetheless warn that the link between tourism and heritage is not automatic. 170 Although Fez was listed as a World Heritage site in 1981, but tourism development only really began in the late 1990s. International institutions also use heritage as a tool in the context of a sustainable development. Heritage – and culture in general – could help development projects. This is what Lafrenz Samuels (2010) calls "globalising heritage" because heritage is involved in global projects mixing the past and social development. This idea follows the 1982 Mondiacult Conference in Mexico, establishing culture as a central component in development strategies. This link between heritage and tourism is symptomatic of a change in the manner UNESCO consider tourism (Cousin, 2008). Tourism is not a threat with devastating effects on heritage if it is well managed. The manual Managing Tourism at World Heritage Sites (Pedersen, 2002) presents sustainable and cultural tourism as a key solution in heritage management, for it is both an industry with a cost, and a potential for preservation. The manual also proposes literature, case studies and recommendations to use tourism as a tool for conservation. UNESCO collaborates with the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) to develop programmes and with TripAdvisor since 2009 to rank the most visited sites. Also, in 2008, the World Heritage Centre was awarded with the World Tourism Award. UNESCO created a UNITWIN network and UNESCO Chair dedicated to Tourism, Culture and
170 The commodification and touristification of heritage and its consequent inauthenticity are at the core of scholars’ interests. On the one hand, they focus on the heritage industry (Hewinson, 1987), which consists in any commercial activity of good and services around heritage. It is also a utopian escape in the past that prevents from dealing with present problems, distracts from engaging with the issues of the present. On the other hand, scholars are interested in the link between heritage and tourism. Di Giovine (2009) investigates the UNESCO heritage system and its link with tourism. In opposition to the idea heritage and tourism are simply collaborative industries (Kirshenblatt Gimblett, 1998), he defines tourism and heritage as two global social structures of meaning making for the heritage scape is a social structure that have real material effects in accordance with UNESCO’s goal of peace making, an imaginative reordering of the world that exists in the mind of human beings. Di Giovine (id.) takes for granted the link between World heritage and tourism. Prigent (2011) also asserts that tourism is nowadays the first function of World Heritage sites and some scholars, such as Girard (2006b), equate tourism development and heritagisation for the relation of otherness they implement. However, several scholars question this link between heritage and tourism in econometric (Tallandier, 2008) or comparative (Nicot and Ozdirlik, 2008) studies. The link between heritage and tourism remains unclear (Gravari Barbas and Jacquot, 2008), because of the various and complex combinations between listing, development, heritage and tourism.
258 Development. Finally, tourism issues are mentioned in the manual for the nomination applicant. 171 The principles of "good governance" and of "participation of local populations" are of prime importance in international projects using heritage as a development tool. The notion of good governance was first used by international financial institutions to define the criteria of a good public administration in developing countries subject to structural adjustment programmes. It is, according to the UNDP, the basis of development and of a participative, democratic and open management of public matters. In Fez, the authors of the 1992 UNDP report advise to control and regulate the actions of safeguard and rehabilitation but also to urge on and to help inhabitants engage in these actions. One major aim of involving local populations is the durability and the sustainability of the project and the actions implemented. The actions "One monument, one sponsor" and "One monument, one architect" held in 1992 were inscribed in this project of raising awareness and participation of local populations. It was asked of private sponsors to fund the restoration of a building, and of architects to draw the architectural plans and to control the works for free. However, a ccording to Lahbil Tagemouati (2000), the paternalist and centralised management of the medina by the public authorities prevent inhabitants from being responsible. Lotfi, a Moroccan living in the New City, asserted that "people are passive instead of moving their asses." Meriem, a Moroccan architect, also shared this opinion. "People are lacking personal initiative. Because, I have to say, we are the best at criticising others. But when you say 'Ok, I think we may solve this matter, who is ready for?' Then, you are alone! People have this culture. It is this idea of Welfare State. The State provides jobs, food, repairs houses... And at the same time, we want democracy. But our discourse is contradictory. There are two ways: either you have a guardian taking care of you from A to Z, so you don't have to criticise its job, because he is the guardian and he knows things better than you. Then, you have a superior entity that governs you, and you are happy. You are happy and you shut up. Or you have ideas to be the actor of your life, to change things, to live better, to express what you think. And you act accordingly." Among recent international projects, the World Bank (2010) "Fez Medina Rehabilitation Project" (1998 2005) sought to join heritage conservation and poverty reduction by creating jobs and raising property prices. The idea is that the medina and its buildings "can play a significant role in expanding tourism revenues by attracting international cultural tourism." 172 This $ 27 million
171 "Tourism management is often a major issue for World Heritage properties given the great interest by people in visiting properties, the potentially large scale of visitation, and the need to provide information about a property as well as other visitor facilities. The specific effects of World Heritage listing on visitor numbers vary, and should be specifically anticipated. Tourism management consistent with and sympathetic to the protection, conservation and management of potential Outstanding Universal Value must be addressed as part of the nomination. In many cases, a separate tourism management plan is prepared for properties – integrated with the general property management plan or system. Such tourism management plans must be implemented and effective" (UNESCO, 2011: 91 92) 172 Nonetheless, if "any medina, by definition, deserves rehabilitation, not all of them can claim a trajectory of
259 (about 21 million €) project was supposed to provide a model of heritage preservation and development, which, once worked out, could be repeated over and over again in other historical centres. This programme also differed from the UNDP programme in two points (Abry, 2005). The first is economic. The UNDP conceived the medina like a place of work 173 and focused on the reinforcement of craft and commercial activities. The World Bank reversed the idea, making of heritage into an investment with an economic and social benefit. The second issue is social. Both institutions consider the medina as a place of poverty. Within the UNDP programme, public authorities focused on housing and tried to reduce the population density in the medina. The World Bank (1995) came up with the idea of population participation and investment enhancement. However, both the UNDP and the World Bank were concerned with a cultural issue, namely to make of the medina a tourism destination without turning it into a cultural industry. Finally, the World Bank programme rested on two main ideas. Firstly, cultural heritage being an essential component of societies, it is better to use it like a springboard in order for it to not be an obstacle. The second idea is the link between economy (poverty and tourism), culture (heritage) and education to develop a city. This link between tourism and heritage through good governance is not neutral. According to Lafrenz Samuels (2010), cultural heritage is a major vector for integrating North Africa in the world economy. International organisations and foreign countries use tourism development as a means to open up North African countries politically. They promote economic reforms with the ultimate goal of instigating political changes, such as the neutralisation of Islam in Tunisia. In Fez, many informants – mainly Moroccans but also some foreign residents – pointed out that major works in the medina targeted tourists rather than Moroccans. For instance, tourist areas were painted and a wooden roof protected passersby from the sun, while poor neighbourhoods were yet to be supplied with running water. Development projects establish tools – heritage, tourism, good governance – and concrete actions in order to settle a project and to change a given situation. Their success depends on the ability of human beings to adapt them to the situation they encounter. However, each project is different from the other and the implementation of frameworks in different situations may lead to scattering and cause resistance or to 'disneylandisation' – the oblivion of heritage in favour of tourism.
sustainable local development via cultural tourism. For the purpose of identifying the required characteristics, the World Bank proposes the Medina Tourism Potential Index, as a useful operational check list." 173 The medina provides the whole city with half of the jobs, even if most of them are in the informal sector (Fejjal, 1991).
260 6.2.7. Heritage as a label
Heritage may be a label – the result of an official nomination that fits criteria – used to assert a position or to promote a site. Labels constitute a guarantee, a strong argument in the promotion of tourism. The authentication of heritage by experts diminishes the risk of dissatisfaction the visitor may feel, since he doesn't know the real quality of the site before visiting it (Morisset and Dormaels, 2011). Florent (2011) defends the idea whereby the list of World Heritage is aimed to protect and promote heritage while the World Heritage label is used as a commercial argument. However, the heritage label is not a major element in the promotion of the city of Fez. Few tourist accommodation owners mention in their promotional website that their house is located in a World Heritage site. Also, the logo "Smile, you are in Fez" promoting the city since 2012, has no reference to culture or heritage. A British tourist in a guest house was disappointed by this fact. "Funny, not exactly what I expected from one of the Western hemisphere's oldest cultural and intellectual centre. In its rivalry with Marrakech, is Fez becoming Disneyfied?"
Pic. 32. Logo "Smile you are in Fez" on a wall in Boujloud square. Credit: M. Istasse
"Fès, Capitale Mondiale de la Culture et de la Civilisation "174 ("Fez, World Capital of Culture and Civilisation") is a 8 minute movie shot in 2009 by the Regional Council of Tourism (CRT). It promotes Fez as a tourist destination. The first part of the movie shows general views of the medina, craftsmen, people walking in the street, tanneries. There is no comment, only zither music. After 2.15 minutes, the tourism promotion of the city starts. A voice over presents the advantages of Fez and the goals of the city's public authorities. "The Government, the local authorities, the elected body and professionals are involved in making of Fez, this living millenary museum, this authentic destination, this city of cultural and spiritual encounters, a high place of tourism."
174 http://youtu.be/ipdTzYclTlA
261 Generally, the institutions promoting tourism rather refer to the features of the city, which are by the same token the criteria of the nomination. The websites visitfes.org (managed by CRT) and visitmorocco.com (managed by the Ministry of Tourism) describe Fez as a spiritual and cultural capital hosting the first university in the Arab World, as the most ancient town in Morocco, as a place of exchange between cultures characterised by the quality of its craft industry, as well as a huge pedestrian area. Fez is also famous for its talented craftsmen as lauded in the description of "Secret Fez" by the Ministry of Tourism (cf. figure). The TripAdvisor website presents Fez as a World Heritage site bringing tourists back in the Middle Ages and famous for its typically Moroccan mosaic. Pictures in these websites mainly show the tanneries, general views on the medina, and craftworks such as mosaic.
Fig. 3. Secret Fès http://visitmorocco.com/index.php/eng/content/view/ full/374
Only the Fez PDRT (Regional Programme of Tourism Development) put heritage at the core of its projects, starting with the cover of its leaflet. According to this PDRT, heritage represents 47% of the cultural resources in Fez (museums, cultural festivals, historical buildings, gates, fountains). However, the PDRT mentions that these resources are of a limited interest – bad infrastructures, no promotion – compared to Marrakech.
262
Fig. 4. Fez PDRT cover The label of heritage is clearly present as a justification, as an authority supporting a decision or a position in a conflict. 175 For instance, members of the Inspection of Historical Monuments and members of the municipality use it to support different – or opposite – actions of preservation. The municipality allows the use of reinforced concrete in the medina by referring to the fact that UNESCO agreed to its use in the rebuilding of a minaret in Meknes. The Inspection refers to UNESCO to avoid the use of modern materials such as reinforced concrete. Conflicts may also involve other justifications, such as security or development (cf. supra p. 206). Members of the civil society also refer to heritage to assert their ideas. A Facebook Group named " Tous pour Fès ville sans bois "176 ("All for Fez, a city without wood") fights against shoring in the medina because houses still collapse and people die. In their view, wooden shores are not a secure solution. They shot a short movie 177 to pay tribute to the victims of collapsed houses. The 23 members of this group assert that public servants are guilty of an organised crime against Fez. "Lives, memories, history and heritage die everyday. We safeguard our heritage with wood [stays]. What is the result? Houses collapse, people die and are injured, and heritage is lost." Finally, heritage as a label also creates unity and may support an idea of community. Many informants underlined the advantages of the heritage label. According to Hassan, the medina is a label that "mobilises everybody for the safeguarding, not only in Morocco. Everybody in the world. […] It is a label, an opportunity for the city to gather efforts to preserve its heritage." Also, the press articles and the news reports invited everybody in the world to participate and attend to the 1200 th anniversary of Fez in 2008. Journalists described the creation of Fez like the moment when the unity between peoples and its rich diversity were forged. However, the celebrations failed to
175 Berliner (2010) and Herzfled (1991) shed light on this use of the label of heritage in justification processes in other heritage sites. 176 http://www.facebook.com/groups/72696972618/ 177 http://youtu.be/LvhiC4UJKYohttp://youtu.be/N5SPiVRIO98
263 achieve this unifying goal, as Moroccan elites and foreigners composed the majority of the public. More generally, the World Heritage nomination inscribes a site in a unity through keywords. 178 These keywords relates to: • what UNESCO promotes – e.g. peace, diversity, dialogue between cultures and civilisations, heritage, universal brotherhood; • how the goals have to be promoted – e.g. preservation of heritage, education and training, research and science; • criteria determining heritage – e.g. universal value, integrity, exceptionality; • categories of heritage – e.g. natural and cultural, landscapes, group of buildings. These ways of unity making are at the same time inclusive – i.e. they define a community – and exclusive – i.e. they exclude those who do not care for it, or those who care in a bad way – i.e. unskilled medina inhabitants. Nielsen (2011) presents the culture as used by UNESCO as a "right kind of culture" that is not so tolerant with regards to cultures that do not respect Human Rights. Maurel (2004) is interested in UNESCO's drawing of cultural borders.
This "list" of heritage forms is not complete. I didn't mention heritage as an economic object for two reasons. Firstly, on the base of the Fassi case, tourist accommodations more accurately fit in heritage as a daily object, as owners hardly consider them as heritage. Secondly, the medina as heritage is rather a label used in the promotion of tourism. In other words, in Fez, the economic side of heritage blends into various forms and, in my view, does not constitute a form in itself. This overview of the various forms of heritage nonetheless shows that the multiple heritages encountered in Fez follow their own logic – each of them tracing a specific trajectory (Latour, 2012), a specific line (Ingold, 2007a). As a consequence, it is spurious to mix them or to approach and evaluate one form with the criteria of another. Heritage as a daily objet may encounter heritage as a development tool or as an object to preserve in the context of a project but each of them has features that are different – if not opposed – to the features of the other(s). For instance, inhabitants seek comfort in their familial house and this quest may impinge on the preservation of traditional features in the house. Also, if a category of people – inhabitants, scholars, experts – preferentially relates to a form of heritage, it is spurious to enclose people into one form. Human beings move between these forms. Finally, all the forms of heritage share similar features, namely a specific relation to the past, an idea of culture as an existing entity, an importance of experts, and moral principles. These four features constitute the contemporary heritage fiction.
178 Keywords, such as peace, diversity, heritage and its preservation, authenticity are also shared by other institutions acting in the international scene, such as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
264 6.3. Heritage as a fiction
Rather than a value, a sign or a symbolic object hiding a deeper meaning such as identity, I argue that heritage is a fiction. 179 This statement doesn't mean that heritage is a pure fantasy or a utopia. Beings of fiction are not false or illusory but are real and constructed. Latour (2012), similarly to Schaeffer (1999) and Ricoeur (2001), makes of fiction a full reality that cannot be judged in terms of truth and falsity. However, Schaeffer (id.), inspired by Aristotle, characterises fiction by imitation and " feintise " (feinting) while Latour (id.) defines it as a way of figuration. Elements of fiction are then external to human beings – they impose themselves to human beings – at the same time they need them to exist – they wouldn’t last in time without human beings to support and extend them. Aside from human beings, materials and tools such as buildings, conventions or project reports, shovels, are of prime importance in the setting and the support of a fiction. Finally, fiction is a frame for what happens, 180 what has to be settled before any action can happen (Hennion and Vidal Naquet, 2012), a common space in which relationships, exchanges, actions, shared meanings, allocations of roles, affects, gestures and tones take place. This common space of heritage allows us grasping why heritage is a buzzword that "everybody" understands without having to define it, at the same time as it varies in form and definition depending on the situation. The heritage fiction is this common space composed of what is assumed to be obvious – and then glossed over – when speaking of heritage. The aforementioned forms of heritage are at once different from each other, specific, and similar. One can easily switch from one form to another without having to redefine heritage because they share four basic elements, namely a specific relation to the past, the definition of culture as a specific entity, the role of experts and moral principles. 181 Finally, the heritage fiction distinguishes heritage from memory and history. The three of them share a specific relation to the past and a link with culture, identity and transmission. However, each puts different stress on the four elements. History is generally – by Nora or Ricoeur among others – defined as the objective knowledge (or construction, selection of what human imagine of the past by experts (historians) through documentary evidence and explanatory models. Also, history is assumed to be free of moral principles. Last but not least, history is about the
179 Heritage as a fiction doesn't contradict my former assertion defining heritage as a quality. This latter refers to the specific form of heritage taken by the fiction after it has anchored in a situation through qualification (cf. infra p. 278). 180 Instead of a heritage fiction, one could talk of a heritage imaginary or, following Butler, of a "heritagenormativity," that is to say a cultural norm or a regulatory idea of what is allowed and repressed about heritage, what is normal about heritage and what is not. Or paraphrasing Saxer (2013), one could evoke a "moral economy of cultural heritage", that is to say "the production, sharing, circulation and use of moral feelings, emotions and values, norms and duties in the social space" (Fassin, 2009: 1257, my translation). 181 In order to go beyond the Fassi case and to extend the idea of a contemporary heritage fiction to the heritage realm, I support this assertion by adding examples linked to heritage in general.
265 development of a culture through time. As far as it is concerned, Memory is a popular, subjective remembrance. It is the past as lived by human actors, a kind of oral history that is part of a culture. What, then, about heritage?
6.3.1. Relation to the past
A certain relation to the past is found in each form of heritage. The past is present in the legal form with the vocabulary related to heritage – heirs or inheritance. The past is also what has to be preserved. The past may also be taken as a model in development projects. When taking heritage as a label, members of institutions promote features of the past such as the traditional and the medieval aspects of the medina. The past is part of the definition Fassi informants gave of heritage. Many of them mentioned continuity in time under two variations: continuity with the transmission of "what has always been," or the rupture with the past in terms of decay, loss and disappearance. Foreigners mentioned the feeling of stepping into the past – Fez is a medieval city in their view – and Moroccans evoked the Golden Age of the medina during the Merinid period. In this temporal context, oldness – length in time – is of prime interest. Informants also spoke in nostalgic tones 182 and expressed a feeling or fear of loss, threat and disappearance. This feeling is at the base of the UNESCO listing of the Fez medina. "The changes had become so important during the last decades that Fez risks, under demographic, social, and economic pressures without equivalent in its history, losing its profound originality of being one of the purest jewel of Islamic culture" (Amadou M'Bow, call for Fez Campaign, April 1980). 183 This loss, or the threat of loss, may be real or not. As De Certeau (1984: 159) puts it, a local authority "deprives of what it enjoins, [or which] never gives what it promises. Far from expressing an empty space or to describe a lack, it creates it." As a consequence, one could argue that the moral incentive to preserve and transmit heritage performs the heritage disappearance. The past is also at the core of the criteria involved in the listing of the Fez medina as a World Heritage site. As described in the nomination file, "[t]he medina of Fez constitutes an outstanding example of a medieval town created during the very first centuries of Islamisation of Morocco and presenting an original type of human settlement and traditional occupation of the land representative of Moroccan urban culture over a long historical period (from the 9th to the
182 Nail (1997) argues that nostalgia was at the core of the emergence of gardens as heritage in the 19 th century Great Britain. A sterile, impersonal and blurry past inviting to daydreaming and giving an image of order and harmony was presented to the middle class and to the bourgeoisie to make them aware of the emergency to protect heritage. 183 Cf. appendix p. 392.
266 beginning of the 20th centuries)." Developers, and tourist accommodation owners, for their part try to combine modernity with the past. They aim to provide comfortable houses to inhabit at the same time these houses look old and authentic to tourists. Lafrenz Samuels (2010) studies the management of past remains at the global scale in social projects. She takes the example of the World Bank project in Fez to investigate "how the past is put to work" (Lafrenz Samuels, id.: 23). In another vein, Tayyibi and Laïla Skalli, two Moroccan architects, defend earth and natural architecture against the new materials used in construction. In Fez, scholars aim to preserve the past by writing books and articles about it. More generally, social sciences scholars investigate the temporal aspect of heritage, and more particularly the relation between heritage and modernity (Martin Granel, 1999; Jeudy, 2001; Fournier, 2004) or the historical depth of heritage as a process (Harvey, 2001). Others, such as Tornatore (2001), Hartog (2003), Butler (2006) and Hennion (2011), speak of the presence of the past in the present. To them, the past is necessarily constructed in the present. Things of the past are made present through their actualisation. The past is not a matter of duration but of use of a representation of the past. 184 In Rethemnos (Crete), Herzfeld (1991: 6) focuses on the "social context of a massive historic conservation effort," on the "social uses of time and its monumentalization by officialdom," on the battle over time opposing a monumental – or official – and single time to a social and multiple time, on the tension between the experienced social life characterised by a fragmented and polyphonic past and the powerful model of a monumentalised Western culture.
6.3.2. Culture as a specific entity 185
In Fez, culture is a core notion. The medina is presented as the cultural capital of Morocco because of its craft industry and the numerous populations who lived – and still live – there. One can find in the medina a way of life characteristic of Moroccan culture. Moreover, the Qaraouiyine mosque and university was responsible for both a concentration and a spread of culture in the Muslim world between the 9 th and the 15 th centuries. Numerous tourist accommodation websites make use of culture in their description of the house and/or of the city – the house reflects Moroccan culture. Institutions promoting tourism also refer to culture in their websites or in their leaflets. Lawyers, among others, are concerned with cultural rights and cultural claims around
184 According to De Certeau (1988), the past is written only in the present on the basis of an absence, or in other words, history doesn’t write the past but realises its lost. 185 A similar investigation should be done about the notion of Nature.
267 heritage and restitution – e.g. a claim for security as the Facebook group " Fès, une ville sans bois " did. Moroccan inhabitants spoke of the vanished way of life as part of Moroccan culture. Members of heritage institutions divide culture into categories in order to better manage it and to highlight the different kinds of cultural heritage. Developers and consultants, as well as UNESCO, use culture – and cultural heritage – in their projects of economic, tourism and/or sustainable development or in the context of cultural animation. Finally, when using heritage as a label, members of the Inspection defend the respect of culture when one undertakes works in a house. Moreover, culture is one of UNESCO's departments, together with science and education. The World Heritage apparatus is part of the culture department, and the World Heritage Centre promotes on its website "[o]ur cultural and natural heritage [that] are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration." It aims to preserve "outstanding examples of cultural diversity and natural wealth." Culture, being one kind of heritage, is at the base of 6 criteria for listing elements of heritage as World Heritage. Finally, through the 1972 World Heritage Convention, UNESCO aims to "encourage participation of the local population in the preservation of their cultural and natural heritage" and to promote cultural dialogue. Similarly to this idea of cultural encounter, some informants – inhabitants but also members of the Ziyarates programme and organisers of the Sacred Music Festival – made of Fez "a very powerful place. Morocco in general, but Fez in particular, is a really important centre between East and West, between Muslims and non Muslims. The country shows tourists that in reality Muslims are not all terrorists and they do all want things like you and me: good health, education for the children, somewhere to live, good food on the table. I think it is important" (Helen, manager of a renting agency). In order to grasp a specific culture and to preserve it, education is of prime importance. The World Heritage apparatus puts the emphasis on educating people to their heritage. For instance, it implemented a World Heritage Education kit to raise awareness of young people about the conservation of heritage. Teachers and educators are supposed to use this education concept available in 35 languages. In Fez, Moroccan elites, members of institutions and foreigners accused Moroccans of not taking care of their heritage because they were uneducated. This lack of education was supposedly one reason for the decay of heritage in Fez. Also, Antoine, the French manager of a construction company, declared that "we have been educated about this [i.e. heritage preservation]. So, if you want, in France, if you own a good that is part of the national heritage, but you do not take good care of it, laws authorise the State to punish you or to seize your good to preserve it. And you know that the State may do it. Here, they [i.e. inhabitants] don't have any idea of what the State may do to help them or to coerce them."
268 6.3.3. Experts
Experts are at the core of each form of heritage and they try to silence other holders of expertise, such as autodidact experts. In Fez, these experts are of various kinds.186 Lawyers implement and deal with laws and legal documents related to heritage. Archaeologists excavate and preserve pieces of heritage and curators take care of these pieces in museums. Scholars in the social sciences are concerned with heritage, its values, its uses, and what it tells about human groups – e.g. Buob with coppers or Skalli with Sufism. Tourist developers make use of heritage in their politics and developers involve heritage in their projects. In that context, Lafrenz Samuels (2010) asserts that the World Bank is a meta expert in heritage development, for it assesses a cultural expertise rather than an economic expertise in the field of heritage. 187 Members of institutions, such as Hassan, define or apply the definitions and categories of heritage. Nielsen (2011) studies the gap between the ideological projects and notions of UNESCO and the everyday practises of UNESCO experts and employees who refer to institutionalised World Heritage keywords them in their programmes and reports. Experts believe in UNESCO words and ideas but they are also critical and take distance from these ideals. For instance, they copy/paste documents, words or formula from referent document and they use approved keywords to have their proposals accepted, to gain institutional authority and to avoid censorship, and not by ideological involvement. Tourist developers make use of heritage in their politics and developers involve heritage in their projects.
6.3.4. Moral principles
Moral principles stir many human actors in Fez around the preservation of heritage. After a principle of equality, developers use heritage as a lever for poverty alleviation, such as in the World Bank project. Members of the Millenium Challenge Corporation project wanted to avoid mere expropriation and they took care of defining which subvention to give to inhabitants according to a principle of justice. Public authorities present Fez as a city of universal concern in the preservation of its heritage because it hosted the first university in the world, it is the capital of crafts and the biggest pedestrian area in the world. Legal experts work hand in hand with experts in preservation to define an ethical law of conservation and protection (Skrydstrup and Wenland, 2006). Social
186 For an overview of experts in Fez, cf. supra p. 202. 187 Until the 1980s, the World Bank had little interest in cultural heritage. But the failure of its economic development paradigm of reducing poverty pushed it to the idea that knowledge is a key solution to link economic development and culture.
269 science researchers wonder about their position in heritage settings (Tornatore, 2007). Moroccan inhabitants talked of the past way of life in the medina as more moral than the present one, for it was characterised by respect among generations. Also, by using traditional materials and techniques, informants had the feeling of respecting their house and the heritage of the city. David and Fettah aimed to spread the moral incentive to take care of heritage in Fez. This incentive to preserve heritage in order to transmit it to future generations, to safeguard it from disappearance, to act for the universal sake through cooperation and solidarity – three motto of UNESCO World Heritage – are coloured with morality (Brumann, 2009a). The restoration of Dar Adiyel, a palace in the Fez medina turned into a museum of Andalus music, is presented in the final report (Touri and al., 1999) as an ideal and successful cooperation and as the best way to reduce misunderstanding between human beings as it matched cultural specificities in harmony and resulted from international solidarity. Also, one main aim of UNESCO is to implement "peace in the minds of Men" by means of the protection and transmission of cultural heritage and its universal outstanding value, for they contribute to favouring cultural dialogue and to avoiding conflicts. For instance, UNESCO experts and employees were concerned with a more balanced and representative list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage in the 1990s. They aimed at representing any country and any kind of heritage on the List. As Garsten and Jacobson (2011) argue, this is due to the fact that large scale institutions implement a post political form of ethics, a form of governance in which political conflicts are transformed into moral frameworks. Post political global ethics means that standards are de contextualised from local realities and re contextualised into a harmonious one world paradigm. As a consequence, institutions implement soft rules and soft laws that are normative in content but that are not backed up with sanctions. The various UNESCO Conventions and Recommendations are legal texts but are not assorted with specific sanctions. The only sanction is the removal from the list – which happened only twice. Nation States that have signed it commit to protect their cultural heritage and to respect the universal value of cultural heritage located in other countries. By joining the Convention, States "express a shared commitment to preserving our legacy for future generations," as it is written in the 1972 World Heritage Convention.
270 6.4. Circulation and anchorage of the heritage fiction
The contemporary heritage fiction and its forms are not specific to Fez. They are however not similar in every heritage site. For instance, heritage as a daily object in Fez is not similar to heritage as a daily object in Luang Prabang (Berliner and Istasse, 2013). Each form of heritage anchors specifically, and a comparison of detailed anchorages investigated by ethnographers may help understand and describe the heritage fiction. Also, the fiction and its forms do not come from nowhere. The Second World War is one of these historical moments that left a deep imprint in the heritage fiction, as the Protectorate did in Morocco. I however focus on the circulation and the anchorage of the heritage fiction in this last chapter.
6.4.1. Anchorage and localisation
I dedicated the fifth section of this dissertation to a specific way for the heritage fiction to anchor in situation, namely qualification. I insisted on the qualification of daily objects – houses of the medina. In this section, I focus on some anchorages of heritage as a definition and a category. Something is anchored, or localised, when it is framed in a situation, 188 be it geographic or virtual. The Fez medina, the UNESCO offices in Rabat and in Paris are located in distinct geographic areas. These three places are three anchorages and locations of World Heritage. Human actors – inhabitants, UNESCO experts or employee –, material objects – buildings and their furniture – and immaterial ones – the presentation of heritage – frame each of these three locations. For instance, the head of the cultural heritage section defined the Rabat office as an "emanation from Paris" in charge of the whole Maghreb – save for Libya. Members of the Rabat office do not work in Paris and hardly ever go there for a meeting. However, they may make decisions in terms of cultural actions, and constitute an intermediary acting in the name of the World Heritage Centre. It is commonsense to say that listed sites in their geographic anchorage do not correspond to their description in the nomination file or on the World Heritage Centre website. The site, the nomination file, the website are three locations of heritage. During the nomination process, each relevant criteria and category for the site has to be described on paper. Members of the public authorities in the country requesting a nomination submit the file. In Fez, they particularly insisted on the long history of the city, on Arabs living together with Jews and other peoples, and on the difficult preservation of a decaying cultural heritage. ICOMOS consultants and experts then check the conformity of the described criteria and categories with the site and they submit an evaluation to
188 A situation is framed by components of various states of being (human and non human) and coming from different spaces and times.
271 the World Heritage Committee. 189 Diplomats of this Committee finally decide on the nomination during the World Heritage Committee Session. Fez was listed as a tangible cultural heritage and a historic centre. Experts in the country, ICOMOS consultants, diplomats, categories and criteria, missions and sessions then framed the medina of Fez as defined and categorised in the nomination file. The presentation of the Fez medina in the World Heritage Centre website 190 is another place of anchorage. The homepage offers various tabs providing information about Fassi heritage. The tab "Description" starts with a brief historical overview followed by a range of pictures, the presentation of its outstanding universal value – what it is in Fez, what the nomination criteria are, what authenticity and integrity are found in the Fez medina, and the protection and management requirements – and a long description of the criteria and the site. On the top right of the page is the identity card of the site, that is to say the country with its flag, the name of the site, the GPS coordinates, the date of inscription, the criteria, the size of the property – 280 ha – and the reference number – 170. Below, we find a Google map locating the medina in North Africa and links to media, activities and other links – the same that one finds at the bottom of the page. This top right column finishes with an access to the "State of Conservation" file listed by year. The second tab, "Map", shows the multiple locations of the site – 220 ha in Fez el Bali and 60 ha of buffer zone in Fez Jdid. The next tab, "Documents", presents the various official documents to download – decisions, periodic reports and state of conservation reports. A click on the tab "Gallery" opens two pages of pictures taken by several photographers and presenting views of the medina – panoramic views, tanneries, minarets, doors, Qaraouiyine mosque among others. The tab "Video" provides a video that is not available anymore. The tab "Indicator" reports "the frequency at which the World Heritage Committee has deliberated over this property over the past 15 years". One can learn that the "Threat Intensity Coefficient" is 5 in 2001, 29 in 2004 and 10 in 2011. Finally, the tab "Assistance" gives an overview of the three financial requests the Fez medina asked of UNESCO. These financial aids funded a photogrammetric survey of the hydraulic clock (1988: $18,500), the organisation of a meeting in January 1995 (1995: $20,000), and an exhibition on the restoration work of Dar Adiyel (1999: $3,700). In the situation of its Internet presentation, the Fez medina is framed by human actors – photographers who took pictures, IT engineers who update the website, heritage experts who gathered information, readers who look for information –, material objects such as computers, and immaterial ones such as the internet. These components framing the anchorage belong to various spaces – the IT employee and the readers are not in front of each other and the site may be
189 http://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/170.pdf for the 1981 evaluation of the Fez file. 190 http://whc.unesco.org/fr/list/170
272 kilometres away – and times – the pictures have been taken years ago.
Aside from qualification, the notion of translation191 is useful to understand the processes of anchorages in situation. The heritage fiction would be translated by some actors – those in power – into what is efficient and sensible in a specific situation, or in other words, in a specific form. For instance, the notion of authenticity as defined in the World Heritage apparatus 192 (heritage as a definition) is translated as traditional, beldi (from the country) or qdim (old) in Fez (heritage as a daily object). The rules and permits necessary for any work in the medina (legal heritage) are translated in constrains by inhabitants (heritage as a daily object). The preservation of the medina (heritage as an objet to preserve) is first and foremost a place to develop in the view of international organisations (heritage as a tool for development). Also, Lafrenz Samuels (2010) studies the "translations of heritage in international organizations" and "how heritage is 'placed' within the context of heritage development projects" (Lafrenz Samuels, id.: 25). She particularly looks at the translation of expertise and heritage management from the national to the transnational scale. She takes as example the technical terms of "significance" in the US context that is translated into "good governance" in the World Bank project in Fez.
6.4.3. Circulation of the heritage fiction
The heritage fiction also circulates between situations. In this section, I focus more specifically on the circulation of World Heritage through the media. Television documentaries present the heritage richness of the Fez medina. In the United Kingdom, Design 360 on CNN in 2003, was shot notably in a guest house in Fez. Uncharted Territories on BBC in 2005 presents adventures of two British citizens in their purchase of a house in Fez. Both documentaries evoke repeatedly the cultural heritage of Fez and the listing as a World Heritage site. In 2010, the programme Reflets Sud presented " Fès l'africaine " ("Fez the African") on La Deux, a Belgian television channel. In that documentary, Fez is immediately described as a "spiritual capital of Morocco" and a "universal UNESCO heritage." Capital on M6 in 2006 broadcasted a documentary entitled "Morocco, the new tourist industry." The producers presented several cities – Marrakech,
191 "By translation we understand all the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes to be conferred on itself, authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or force" (Callon and Latour, 1981: 279). 192 Depending on the type of cultural heritage, and its cultural context, properties may be understood to meet the conditions of authenticity if their cultural values (as recognized in the nomination criteria proposed) are truthfully and credibly expressed through a variety of attributes including: form and design; materials and substance; use and function; traditions, techniques and management systems; location and setting; language, and other forms of intangible heritage; spirit and feeling; and other internal and external factors (Operational Guidelines, 2012, § 82).
273 Essaouira and Fez – and insisted on the heritage one could find in Fassi houses. Maisons du Sud – Maroc dedicated in 2007 three episodes 193 to Fez and foreigners who had settled in the medina. In the three episodes, the same feminine voice over gives general information about the medina. This medina was the first capital city of Morocco in the 9 th century, it is the oldest medieval city in the Muslim world, the home of the first university in the world, a leading intellectual city, a city of faith and knowledge with winding and steep streets and where one can find the same age old rituals in the tanneries. "Living in Fez is like jumping back in time. In this city, Western values are challenged. The fact that no car can go in gives it an exceptional charm. In the souks, nestled in narrow streets, one can discover the traditional Moroccan art of life." Images of Merinid tombs, of the Moulay Idriss shrine, of Bab Boujloud, of minarets, of dates' shopkeeper, of the city walls, of the tanneries, of streets with people and donkeys, and panoramic views of the medina illustrate these elements of information. The French television documentary Des Racines et des Ailes dedicated two episodes to Fez, "Marrakech Fez" in 2003 and "Taste of Morocco: from Fez to Casablanca" in 2010. In the 2010 episode, Fez is described as a traditional city compared to Casablanca. According to the journalist, "progress stopped at the medina gates." As a consequence, "time has stopped" and "the city remained authentic while other cities lost their identity." In Fez, the Qaraouiyine mosque is, according to the journalist, a very prestigious religious place in Morocco and the first university in the Arab world. Fouad Serghini, the ADER director then presents the recent restoration work in the Attarine medersa (i.e. Koranic school) and underlines the financial help from the Moroccan Government is not sufficient to restore – and even maintain – the medina. The help of private investors is necessary. Laïla Skalli, a Moroccan architect, is one of these people who preserve heritage in Fez. As an architect born in Fez, she had the idea to establish a home stay programme, Ziyarates (cf. supra p. 67). The journalist then follows her in several Ziyarates houses. The topic of the 2003 episode aims "to discover the soul of two imperial cities" according to the presenter. Fez, the eternal city, is compared to Marrakech, the authentic city. Fez is described as "a city listed on the UNESCO World Heritage," as the "oldest Moroccan city" that "has hardly changed since the Middle Ages," as a "city with exceptional richness but left abandoned during a long time," and then as "an awakening city." Several people facilitate this awakening. They are active in the preservation of this heritage. Fettah Seffar, a "child of the medina," and Amélie Darras are members of the Fez Hadara Association. The journalist follows Fettah through "a real labyrinth" and visits key places of the medina – i.e. the main courtyard of the Mokri Palace, the Riad Mokri which is a school of Moroccan crafts, and sûq (market) displaying pastries, dry meat and olives.
193 Available in French on http://youtu.be/QKDKYMzuTLg ; http://youtu.be/t0i 6jM9roo ; http://youtu.be/Qh2mR_L6hpo
274 Mohammed Mezine, a historian, then speaks about the Qaraouiyine, a "must see monument." Fouad Serrhini, the ADER director, offers a visit of a house that "is restored identically with traditional means", as "the use of thousand year old techniques" allows "the preservation of a traditional know how". Finally, Abdu, a painter and the "memory keeper of the [Glaoui] Palace" makes a tour of this Palace and tells " souvenirs " (i.e. memories). In 1993, Olivier Descamps shot a 51 minute movie, Fez, a walk in the medina . The focus is on potters, the Qaraouiyine library, the Bab Boujloud place, and the city walls. In 1999, Jacques Goldstein made a 52 minute documentary, Fez? , which he describes as follows: "No city in the world is built on the same concept as Fez, for Fez is a concept, a claustrophobic entity which is like a negation of town planning. This town was built by rejecting the very idea of towns." Foreigners, ADER members and architects, among others, intervene to show Fez and talk about their ideas. The France5 documentary Morocco, seen from earth and sky made by Denis Dommel and Xavier Lefebvre in 2010, presents Fez as "[t]he oldest imperial city [that] represents a jewel more than 12 century old, whose medina, real labyrinth of a city out of time, is listed as a World Heritage of humanity. […] Hidden behind anonymous facades, we discover jewels of traditional architecture, preserved, unique, such as the Mokri Palace." To discover this architecture, Abdelaziz el Moussaoui, an "architect specialised in the renovation of ryads in keeping with traditional methods" is called upon. Other television documentaries put less stress on the World Heritage label of the medina. Among them is a documentary about the Riad Ghalia, back when it was a restaurant, Dar Tajine. This documentary aims to "unveil Fassi cuisine." Finally, in 2005, Antoine de Maximy, the reporter of J'irai dormir chez vous ( I'll sleep in your house ) went to Morocco, and Fez. He started out with that city because "it is one of the most beautiful old city in Morocco" with not so many tourists. Walking in the main street, he presents the medina as a labyrinth, were it is easy to lose oneself. Internet is another medium of circulation. As Daoust (2007) argues, as the World Heritage apparatus has an international audience, the New Technologies of Information and Communication, like Internet, are very useful in public relations. For instance, in Fez, major restoration works are discussed on the Internet. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=790664 is a forum about the works in R'Cif square. Also, Tayyibi, the former director of the ENA Fez – and head of the UNESCO Earth Architecture Chair in Morocco – dedicated a Facebook page to heritage in Morocco and organised a Facebook day of heritage on the 18 th April 2011. Through specific cases – pictures and comments to which his 1,300 plus Facebook friends respond – he aims to show the value of heritage and architecture in Morocco, to show that numerous sites are not preserved and promoted as they
275 should. To think about heritage and to raise awareness are his core goals. Generally, in their comments, Facebook friends address the issues of beauty ("wonderful fountain!"), restoration and promotion (criticisms of what is done, ideas of what to do), architecture (its specificity to Morocco, its role in daily life, its characteristics), the medina ("it is a wonderful place where we can find back what we have lost thanks to the spirit of the medina"); and heritage ("Fez is wonderful, but it is more than necessary to restore these beautiful buildings. History and memory are essential for the future of any city"). I particularly focused on 7 albums posted by Tayyibi between January and June 2011, "Morocco, Spirit of the place" with 77 pictures, "Fez traditions" with 62 pictures, "Your opinion about Protectorate period architecture" with 10 pictures, "Dereliction and letting go," "Contemporary Moroccan Architecture," "Fez for non tourists," and "Lalla Yaddouna/Fez Morocco." Pictures are not specific to Fez, representing many places in Morocco. When taken in Fez, they represent emblematic places (tanneries, the Seffarine and Neijjarine squares, R'Cif square and gate, city gates), houses in ruins (ordinary houses as well as palaces), elements of decoration decaying or not (central or mural fountain in buildings or in the street, column capitals, pieces of mosaic, detail of painted wood, plaster or wood ceilings), artistic pictures (on the jar doors, light and shadow effects), animals (donkeys, mules), panoramic view of the medina or specific buildings (Moulay Idriss and the Qaraouiyine, minarets), streets with people or prop up. Comments explain, describe or give information (mainly internet links or title of television documentaries) about what is featured on the picture. The tanneries are taken as a glaring example of heritage to preserve. For years now, tanneries are supposed to be moved outside the town's walls. It is difficult, however, to assess the stage of advancement of this relocation process. The latter is inscribed within numerous projects, and the new space meant to host the tanneries has been partly prepared, but nothing official has taken place yet. This move is depicted as a tragedy. "It is a deletion from memory, a waste. To reuse them as jardinières or benches is a bit too simplistic but it is unavoidable..." On the other hand, "I agree with the idea of preserving a memory. But I think it also involves progress as well as the transformation of some places. One has to accept that Fez carries a heavy heritage and a one thousand year history that weighs. […] To reduce the tannery activity may be beneficial for their preservation as well as to reduce the economic and demographic pressures that increasingly threaten the future of the medina." Last but not least, in September 2012, Tayyibi launched a petition " Cultures Constructives en Danger "194 ("Endangered Moroccan Building Cultures"). He sheds light on "the critical
194 http://www.petitions24.net/cultures_constructives_marocaines_en_danger
276 condition of built Moroccan heritage, the need for economic housing respectful of local building cultures, as well as the necessary Moroccan Government will of including sustainability and respect for the environment and heritage" in their programmes. Youtube is the last kind of Internet media I investigated. Aside from the famous music clip of U2 195 – the song Magnificent 196 – in which the medina covered and hidden with white sheets at the beginning is slowly uncovered and then discovered throughout the song, individuals also use Youtube to post movies and picture slideshows related to heritage. A 4'51" slideshow 197 shot by a Moroccan presents pictures of the royal palace doors, tanneries, Sidi Ahmed Tijani and Moulay Idriss mausoleums, Neijjarine fountain, Seffarine square, a street going from the Qaraouiyine to Seffarine, food and suqūq (i.e. markets) with olives or dates, the dyer street, Boujloud square and gate, the New City (fountains during day and night and main avenue), Koranic schools (Attarine, Bouanania), the main street in the mellaH , fountains (in the new city, in religious buildings, in the street), borj (i.e. fortified building) and Merinid tombs, Jnan Sbil garden and its noria, 198 public oven, donkeys and mules. Movies shot and posted by tourists – entitled 'My Historic trip', 'Family travel in Medieval Fez, Morocco', 'Fez: the Magic of Morocco' combine music (be it Arab or not 199 ) and information about the city, its monuments and its history 200 or one particular monument.201 The tanneries are described as "the most remarkable site in Fez, if not Morocco," "some of the oldest tanneries in the world, nearly unchanged since the founding of Fez nearly 1000 years ago," and "run by one family who pass down the ancient techniques from generation to generation." 202 Sometimes, the video description or the writings on the slideshow or movie mention that Fez is a World Heritage site, an imperial city where Muslims and Christians came to study, the "largest medieval Islamic city and the biggest car free urban zone on the earth." Images are similar to those mentioned in the former paragraph. During the celebrations of the 1200 th birthday of Fez in 2008, Moroccan television channels broadcasted short reports about the history of the city or one particular place in Fez.203 Historians gave information about the "mythic Boujloud Square whose walls are 13 century old," the "emblematic square of the spiritual capital city," famous for being a place of celebrations for
195 The group of rap "Fez City Clan" also chose the Fez medina for the clip of their song "Mghrarba Fl Beat" (http://youtu.be/u94W07SGP4w ). 196 http://youtu.be/Yi52HjJbwVQ 197 http://youtu.be/N5SPiVRIO98 198 Machine for lifting water into a small aqueduct . 199 Ya Rayah, classical music or malhun music (melodic poem inspired from Andalus music, urban sung poetry performed by man of craftsmen’s guilds 200 http://youtu.be/5fesOgYB0as, http://youtu.be/nF9Mui6oKlY 201 http://youtu.be/chAGtkI23Qg 202 http://youtu.be/5fesOgYB0as 203 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k3q9gkAE4DRV64zkLl
277 centuries, "will host tomorrow the most prestigious event of its history." Another news report presents the Moroccan delegation that went to France in order to present the event. 204 A member of this delegation, Mohammed Knidri – a university teacher and former Minister – described Fez as the city of the first university in the world, the perennial spiritual capital city of Morocco, and a city that had a cultural influence on the Arab World. A French member mentioned that France was willing to participate to the celebration "in a city listed as a World Heritage site" and being the cradle of a "universal civilisation." On Euronews, one could see a 2010 report dedicated to the pollution resulting from the tanneries. 205 The president of the Chouarra tannery – the "emblematic tannery in Fez" – specifies that "[I] inherited my work from my ancestors. This work is transmitted from fathers to sons. […] Fez is the cultural capital of Morocco, but it is also known as the city of tannery. We continue to work as our ancestors, the first tanners in Fez, did. This contributes to our fame in the country. Today we still work in the same way as before, when the tanneries were created by Moulay Idriss. Tannery is an old tradition in Fez, and it will continue for a long time, Allah willing." This Chouara tannery, a "traditional" tannery uses "natural materials" (pigeon droppings, bark, lime) in opposition to "modern tanneries" or "new generation tanneries" using chemicals (formic acid, sulphates, and chromium) in order to gain time. These chemicals pollute the Oued Sebou river. As a consequence, water treatment plants and a national programme for alleviating the domestic and industrial pollution have been implemented. Music, voice over and people talking in Arabic or French (a Chouara tannery association president, the director of a modern tannery) alternate with oriental music. Images show panoramic views of the Chouara tannery, workers working, skins drying on the rooftops, modern tanneries in the industrial area, dark water going out of a cuve. Institutions in Fez also post movies about the city on Youtube. The ENA (National School of Architecture) posted a short movie (2'58" in length), "Volunteers at the bedside of the medina", 206 about the summer work camps organised by Rempart – a French association organising unpaid work camps in heritage sites – and the A.J.V.C.I. – association organising work camps in Fez – in 2009 and 2010. Volunteers are the central actors represented here: they are shown working in houses in decay, talking with builder workers and walking in the streets. The Ministry of tourism funded several short movies in 2010. Each of them presents a person who is active in the preservation of the medina. Fouad Serghini,207 the ADER director, is the main actor of a documentary whose caption presents the Fez medina. "The Fez medina, historic and
204 http://youtu.be/VNIYuhPefQ8 205 http://youtu.be/8OgDmzWTgt0 206 http://youtu.be/LYP9G3Tw24Q 207 http://youtu.be/O3nqZzT3s98
278 a thousand year old, listed as a World Heritage of humanity, suffers from the march of time. ADER implemented a rehabilitation project aiming to improve living conditions and the preservation of architectural heritage." Two other documentaries show Adil Naji,208 a zelij (i.e. mosaic) master and "a young man who vested himself with a mission: to perpetuate the tradition of zelij inherited from his ancestors," and Abdelkader Ouazzini,209 a brocade master, "one of the last Fassi craftsman to product brocades on Jacquard looms [that] were imported some 100 years ago to weave luminous and luxurious clothes, which creators and brides look for." Finally, print media allow the circulation of World Heritage, even if their main topic relates to tourism. Two Moroccan magazines focused on Fez. In 2006, Labyrinthes, cities of Morocco devoted an issue to the city, " Fès, cité des rois " ("Fez, city of kings"). The more serious and academic magazine Architecture du Maroc ( Architecture of Morocco ) dedicated several articles to what was happening in Fez in terms of restoration and tourist accommodations. In an article headed "La médina de Fès bouge " ("Fez medina is on the move") Msefer (2001) mentions that Fez is a "heritage for humanity" listed by UNESCO, a "cradle of humanity." She lauds the authenticity, dream, peace, truth and change of scenery, as well as the ancestral place and millenarian activities of the medina against globalisation and standardisation. Lahbabi (2004, my translation) devotes an article to Riad Fès, a luxury guest house owned by the architect Chakir Sefrioui. The house is described as an "authentic specimen of Hispano Moorish architecture" with a "thousand and one Andalus nights' atmosphere. Also, Riad Fès represents an example to follow. Sefrioui wants to show there is a way to preserve the prestigious past of Fez and to make discover the authenticity and the splendour of noble Fassi families who made of their houses the trustee and mirror of their refined civilisation" (Lahbabi, id.: 68). Thanks to the owner's training in architecture, the original state of the rooms has been kept, the traditional and the modern has been married in a balance of warm colours and noble materials. At the end, "luxury is the master word" in Riad Fès, which is "an example to save the rich heritage of the imperial city" (Lahbabi, id.: 72).
The media, the actions of the experts on the field and in their offices, the reports emanating from the assembly meetings, the booklets and books edited by UNESCO and the World Heritage Centre are undoubtedly media – means, intermediaries – to circulate heritage fiction – as is the case for fictions, stories and imaginaries (Appadurai, 1996). On the one hand, the capacity of media – means of communication – to circulate things cannot be overestimated. Kurzac Souali (2006) points out that the press articles often follow an Orientalist approach of the medina giving a wrong image of the city. In the aforementioned
208 http://youtu.be/kF0_IjmxwCI 209 http://youtu.be/QHdALWaHmm8
279 magazines, pictures often show luxury houses with swimming pools, a huge patio, luxurious bedroom and bathroom, refined architectural details and panoramic views. In movies – television documentaries and Youtube movies – the same images of the medina (Quaraouiyine, minarets, Koranic schools, food in the sūq) are often accompanied by an Arab music – except in the case of movies shot by an institution. McGuinness (2010), taking the case study of the media discourses about the Fez Sacred Music Festival, argues that the lifestyle press, the official website of the Festival, the cultural policy speech, the travel press, and the counter discourse accounts evolve around the same tropes, namely the timeless and medieval city, the mysterious and labyrinthine city in decay, and the city of extremes between wealth and poverty, the best and the worst experience. On the other hand, media – intermediaries – are unavoidable for the heritage fiction and its forms to circulate. These media participate to the necessary stabilisation, or formalisation, of the fiction and the forms for them to circulate in a stable form and to anchor and take form in situation. Hennion (1993) stresses the importance of objects and devices – such as written reports, press articles or movies – as intermediaries in the circulation of stable elements. According to Latour (1985), material objects help stabilise human’s immaterial creations. Their materiality allows them to travel and makes them visible and stronger. Also, visual and writing techniques favour the strengthening and the sustainability of actors (Latour, id.). Fixed written and visual forms acquire mobility, fixity and readability. For instance, the World Heritage Centre website, which presents written texts and pictures readers can visualise, contributes to the stabilisation of heritage for this form of heritage to circulate – on the Internet – and to anchor in situation – you reading the description of the medina. From this perspective, heritage as a quality (as I defined it in the fifth section) doesn't contradict heritage as a fiction. Heritage as a quality contributes to the anchorage of the heritage fiction and its forms in a situation. Once anchored in situation, the components delineate the form of heritage and it its specificities.
6.4.3 . Local and global
This relationship between anchorage, stabilisation and circulation questions a famous duo in the social sciences, namely the local and the global. 210 Heritage is most of the time studied from a
210 The local and the global have been for long a dangerous duo in social science studies. The idea of a world system (Friedman, 1990; Wallerstein, 2004) characterised by a dominant centre and a submissive periphery makes of the global a superstructure, a holist framework in which to insert the local. Marcus (1995) initiated the idea of circulation and flux between local sites. Sites are localisations that allow the investigation of the system. Appadurai (1996) more specifically stresses the flux that de territorialise and re territorialise themselves. The local and the global may also be understood as scales. Marston (2000) distinguishes three of them. A scale is an
280 local or global perspective. Studies often conclude to a gap between the global level of World Heritage and the local level of the site and to conflicting demands coming from different levels – global, international, national, local – and actors – experts, non experts (Fontein, 2006; Collins, 2008). Some scholars address this problem in terms of better management issues (Fletcher and al: 2007), which only reproduces the divide between experts and non experts and between different levels. Long (2000) proposes the notion of "creolised heritage" 211 as a bridge between the various levels and actors. Owens (2002) speaks of multivocality and heterotopia to report the presence of various levels in one site. However, the descriptions of anchorage and circulation instigates that the local and the global are qualities rather than scales or levels. Collier and Ong (2005) avoid considering globalisation as a new order of things or macro process and localities as resisting to the globalisation process. They focus on phenomena 212 that have the quality of being global, that is to say abstractable, mobile, dynamic, which could be de territorialised and re territorialised in other context without loosing their efficiency and still producing the same results. As such, the global is independent of any cultural or societal condition of possibility. Going further than the global as a quality, Latour (2007) asserts that there is no global or local understood in their usual meaning. Every action/discourse/… occurs in a localised space. The local is then the localisation in situation. As I described, being localised means to be "framed" by components from different states of being and coming from various times and spaces. Being global means to have numerous anchorages and circulating intensively between situations. This circulation doesn't occur between a top and a bottom, but between local(ised) situations. Heritage as defined in the 1972 UNESCO Convention is global, as the document written in 8 languages allows its propagation and reading in many places. Its availability on the Internet intensifies its circulation. As a consequence, it also anchors in many situations. However, it has been shaped in localised places, such as the World Heritage Centre offices in Paris, the rooms of the Committee Session (Brumann, 2011, 2012a and b). The reification of this Convention reinforces ontologically given category, a preordained hierarchical framework for ordering the world – i.e. the local, the regional, the national, the global, a province, or a continent. Scales are also socially constructed outcome from the tension between structural forces and the practises of individuals. It then means a level at which a process operates. Finally, a scale is a conceptual framework that has material consequences. Tremon (2012) makes of the global and the local sizes of scales that the researcher discovers during the investigation. Researchers don't have to choose a level of analysis but looks at the construction of localities. The local and the global are no more analytical tools but are qualities of sites. 211 Creolised heritage is "that loose yet conformed body of archaeological, anthropological, historical (both professional and amateur), linguistic and geographical knowledge that has been augmented with popular myth, hearsay, valorised regional and national socio cultural characterisations as well as cultural and racial stereotypes and caricatures. It is situated between and forms the foundations for both official, professional and popular, non professional representations of heritage. Creolised heritage is hybrid in nature yet the multifarious local, national and global aspects that comprise it are identifiable as separate elements" (Long, 2000: 320). 212 They investigate three main phenomena, namely technological – techno sciences – political – systems of governance – and ethical – regimes of ethical values, trade in human organs.
281 this top down approach because it doesn't show the human actors, times, places and objects involved in their construction, stabilisation, circulation and anchorage. On the other hand, heritage as defined by the medina inhabitants is less global because it mainly consists in oral discourses and because the writings about it do not spread beyond specific situations (a meeting in Fez, the readings for a dissertation about heritage in Fez). But both kinds of heritage as a definition are local(ised) in situations.
This approach of the local and the global as qualities helps us understand why UNESCO is a prime actor in the circulation of the heritage fiction. Close to Wilk's (1995) notion of "global structures of common difference", 213 Turtinen (2000) develops this idea of a "global grammar" of heritage promoted by UNESCO. With the World Heritage List, the World Heritage apparatus classifies Nation States and creates a new world order. According to Palumbo (2009: 157, my translation), the system created by the UNESCO World Heritage is a "classificatory scheme within which the nations states, ideally equals, differ in the elements listed." Finally, Collins (2008) describes World Heritage as an empire, that is to say "sets of 'imperial formations' or 'politics of dislocation' [and] processes of dispersion, appropriation and displacement" (Collins, id.: 282) that implement states of exception based on a state of emergency. In these studies, the global and the local are polar opposites and power is at the core of their relationship. Conflicts are the main point of entry to study them and scholars often use the metaphor of the arena to address them. The discursive approach of World Heritage as an "authorized heritage discourse" (Smith, 2006) could fit more accurately because of its link with fiction. But heritage is not only a discourse. It is a fiction made of specific ideas, actions, human beings, temporalities and spaces. Moreover, the discursive approach doesn’t explain how this discourse is anchored in a given situation. Callon and Latour (1981) work on macro and micro actors. They argue that these actors are not different in nature but rather in size. This size is not given a priori but results from power relationships – i.e. the power to link or to interrupt an interaction. An actor acquires authority through associations – with other bodies, actors, institutions, sustainable materials, ideas – that last in time. The more he creates associations, the more he grows and develops black boxes, that is to say what is taken for granted, what "no longer needs to be considered, […] those things whose content have become a matter of indifference" 214 (Callon and Latour, 1981: 285). As such, black
213 According to Wilk (1995), "global structures of common difference" are a universal language, a common conceptualization of cultural difference. In his view, forms of cultural difference are standardized, but their content is not. Global institutions promote cultural difference, but limit the manner this difference may be expressed by imposing criteria to make difference mutually intelligible. 214 As Morin (1990: 75, my translation) writes, "[t]he first [dramatic problem in the loss of thinking] is that of general
282 boxes are supposed to carry meanings, forces, actors, without transforming them. The size of an actor then comes from an asymmetry he created with other actors, and made sustainable by locking components and relations into black boxes he doesn't have to negotiate anymore. I support the idea whereby the World Heritage apparatus, this "special animal" (Brumann, 2010), is a macro actor that sits on a multitude of black boxes. Brumann (2010, 2012) puts to the fore that notions such as the outstanding universal value, authenticity or sustainable tourism are not discussed during the Committee sessions. Rather, they are used as stable arguments to defend one’s statement and position. They are discussed among the experts of the advisory bodies, or during side sessions held by groups in parallel to Committee sessions. Once those theoretical and philosophical reflections have been carried out, the notions can be taken for granted, and briefly mentioned during the Committee session itself. They then are relegated to black boxes, which they constitute. By creating black boxes – categories, conventions, procedures – and by enrolling other actors – World Bank, NGOs, Nation States – the World Heritage apparatus also imposes its temporality, sizes and their measurement, values and their standards, to other actors. The 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage is one of the main written documents. This Convention describes the kinds of heritages that could be listed, the manners and modalities to use the World Heritage Fund, and the role and duties of States Parties. The World Heritage Centre amended the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention in order to fit the 1972 Convention with realities on the sites by a reflection over the concepts, knowledge and experiences. The criteria that a site has to meet in order to prove its "outstanding universal value" are described in those guidelines. Moreover, the interactions between the various UNESCO bodies participate to the closure of black boxes. The World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 State Parties elected by the General Assembly for 4 years, makes decisions during its annual session. It works with the World Heritage Centre created in 1992 in Paris as a "focal point and coordinator within UNESCO for all matters related to World Heritage," as general secretariat for all the statutory bodies of the convention. It is in charge of the daily management of the Convention, the organisation of annual Committee sessions, it helps State Parties for the preparation of their nomination report, it organises international assistance upon request and workshops and programmes to raise awareness among the public, it collects and transmits information. Together with the Committee and the Centre are working three advisory bodies which provide reports about sites, namely ICOMOS (International Council On Monuments and Sites), IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) and
ideas. General ideas [...] are words, empty words, abstractions. But unfortunately, everybody rely on such general ideas. About life, about society, about love, about politic, about Mitterand, about Giscard, about whatever you want, about the world, about determinism."
283 ICCROM (International Centre for the Study for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property). The first two are Non Governmental Organisations, based in Paris for the first and Gland for the second, while the third is an intergovernmental body located in Rome. Their aim is to provide technical expertise: experts are sent on the sites before the nomination to evaluate and report on the site, and punctually when needed.
Fig. 5. Relations between UNESCO World Heritage bodies
284 7. Conclusion
The core of this dissertation deals with qualifying the Fez medina houses as heritage. During my fieldwork, it quickly appeared to me that although the medina and its houses were listed as a World Heritage site, houses were also something else than heritage. Houses have not always been protected as heritage. Before the French Protectorate in Morocco (1912 1956), the institution of Habous was in charge of some buildings – houses and monuments – and their maintenance and transmission. On the one hand, these buildings served the community through financial profit: either by the products produced in their walls (e.g. mills) or by the services they offered (e.g. public baths or schools). On the other hand, they benefited to individuals, as when owners wanted to keep their building in the family and not split it between all their heirs. During the French Protectorate, French administrators created institutions and laws dedicated to heritage. Members of these institutions, especially today's Inspection of Historical Monuments, listed buildings – mainly monuments such as the city walls or Koranic school – and checked if construction works were in conformity with heritage laws. With the exception of few palaces (Riad and Palace Mokri, Dar Batha), houses were not considered as heritage during that period. Their first official consideration as part of the heritage field dates back to 1954 when the Inspection of Historical monuments listed the entire medina as a national heritage. Since then, members of institutions de facto integrate houses in the category of cultural heritage. They work with heritage lists and laws, urban documents circumscribing heritage areas, leaflets promoting the city to attract tourists. Heritage is a word they use in their daily occupation in a variety of ways: as category, justification or label. The next step occurred in 1981 with the nomination of the Fez medina on the World Heritage list. Scholars and experts from various academic disciplines carried out many studies as well as preservation and restoration works in the medina. UNESCO consultants stayed there for several years to help develop the urban Master Plan and to spot the buildings worth preserving and restoring. Institutions, such as ADER – Agency for the Development and the Rehabilitation – and schools of crafts were created. Members of institution, UNESCO consultants and scholars also accused rural migrants – who had been settling in the medina since the 1940 but who started to massively arrive there as of the 1980s – to cause the building's degradation and the ruralisation of the medina. Nowadays, Moroccan elites, members of institutions and foreigners generally deny any heritage skill to Moroccan inhabitants of poorer social background. The latter are accused of letting houses collapse, of having no taste, or of replacing traditional mosaic by industrial tiles. International projects subsequently monitor the reduction of population density in their programmes
285 of heritage preservation. Since the mid 200s, ADER, on the basis of a World Bank loan, offers financial help to any Moroccan inhabitant willing to undertake construction works. Independently from this World Heritage nomination, foreigners come and settle in the medina where they buy a secondary residence and/or where they open a tourist accommodation. The movement started in the late 1990s and is closely connected to the tourist development of the city. In addition to being a sightseeing stop in the Moroccan tour of imperial cities, Fez has also become a full fledged destination in its own right. For their part, foreigners have undertaken major construction works in almost 200 houses. Despite all these preservation attempts, medina inhabitants, be they Moroccans or foreigners, hardly consider houses as heritage. In informants’ views, houses are first and foremost places to live, which have to be as comfortable as possible, and are at best a familial heritage (warth ), an economic heritage when it is a tourist accommodation, a personal heritage – that is to say a bonus that satisfies personal interest – and, from time to time, or a cultural heritage due to their being located in a World Heritage site, or to their architectural or historical uniqueness. On the one hand, informants never fail to remind that the medina and its houses are 12 centuries old and that various populations (Arabs from North Africa and Spain, Jews from North Africa and Spain) found shelter in its walls. The mix of their architectural inputs resulted in a style, the Arab Andalus style, which is said to be specific to Fez. This style shouldn’t however hide the diversity in size, layout, architectural elements such as balconies and architectural decoration, such as mosaic, which can be found in these houses. On the other hand, Moroccans rather define as heritage a past way of life ( taqalid ) and monumental buildings, be they in ruins ( āthar ) or not ( turāth ). Foreign inhabitants are more eager to consider houses as heritage, although such qualification is generally accompanied by complaints about a loss in know how among Moroccan craftspeople and about the disappearance of ruined houses and other rare elements of architectural decoration.
Beyond this absence of heritage in the daily life of houses, I investigate how inhabitants engage with the materiality of houses, which networks crossed into houses, and which distinctions between human actors these engagements highlighted. Firstly, to undertake these works, private inhabitants as well as public or international institutions, must have a permit issued by the municipality. Indeed, the same institutions as those of the Protectorate, on top of those created following the UNESCO listing, carefully control any work undertaken in the medina. However, both inhabitants and members of institutions play with the official rules in submitting permit requests and in respecting these rules. As a consequence, undertaking works appears to be not only a technical and official process, but also a learning and a
286 social one – mainly for foreigners. Despite the official rules related to construction works, heritage is hardly a primary concern. Inhabitants rather face financial issues: buying materials and paying workers, delays in construction works and bribery. The poorest maintain their house by repainting the walls and improving the waterproofing. Others improve it with modern comfort by adding a fridge, modern tiles, or air conditioners. Others yet undertake major works when they intend to open a tourist accommodation or to upgrade the house to the latest comfort standards. As they want a comfortable house at the best price, they favour modern and practical materials. Some foreigners and Moroccan elites respected the tradition – traditional materials, traditional techniques, recovering the patina – as long as it doesn’t entail much trouble – expensive costs or lack of comfort – and the spirit of the house. Moroccans and foreigners also furnish and decorate their houses. Informal styles of furnishing and decorating – Arab Andalus style, Fassi style, familial style, Berber style, minimalist style, Western style – influence their evaluation of others’ furnishing and decoration. They also follow principles to furnish and decorate, be they formal such as charters in the case of a tourist accommodation or informal such as economic incentives, functionality, memories or personal desires and taste. Taste, rather than heritage, is a master word in the evaluation of others' furnishing and decoration. In that case, taste is assorted with criteria – originality, harmony, beauty. Taste is also a skill – innate or acquired. Finally, taste is used to operate social distinctions between those who have it and those who do not. Foreigners accuse Moroccans of lacking taste with their "kitsch" and "bling bling" furnishing and decoration, while Moroccans stress the lack of taste of foreigners who furnish their house following Western standards and codes of interior design. A house may be a tourist accommodation – guest house, location de meublé or home stay – which involve specific engagements with the house. Moroccan inhabitants who take part in the Ziyarates home stay programme welcome guests in their private house. This programme is a way for them to stay in their house and to have an additional income. Moroccan and foreign guest house owners open a tourist accommodation because they want to change their lifestyle, to avoid boredom in a city that otherwise doesn't provide many forms of Western entertainment, and to make money on their house, to extend their activity in the tourist area or to become elites of their time. They generally dedicate one house to their guests – they hardly live in their guest house. Intimacy is one of their main concerns and living in a separate house or establishing regulations are two ways to protect it. To be hospitable, owners propose comfortable houses and modern standards in bedrooms. Hospitality and the human relation it involves tend to minimise the economic side of this relation. At the same time, owners try to appear as traditional as possible through the furniture and the decoration of the house or the meals they serve. Tourist accommodation owners, similarly to other
287 inhabitants but more obviously than them, follow an "epistemology of presupposition" (Bizzochi, in Fabre, 2009), that is to say that they define and apply tradition on the basis of their idea of the past and not on the past as it is officially described by historians. Inhabitants also evoke the fact that the house allows them to travel, to improve their skills, to practice intellectual and manual works, to express their imagination and creativity. As such, they allocate agency to their house and sometimes consider it as a living entity with a soul. These allocations of agency firstly show that materials and materiality have consequences and, secondly, that houses are located at the crossroad of several territories (economic, media, fiction). Rather than intentional (Gell, 1994), houses are accountable (Jansen, 2013) as they are available and they offer potential holds to be used in situation and to be allocated agency to. The term heritage mainly comes up when Moroccan elites, members of institutions and foreigners explain why Moroccan inhabitants do not take care of their house and are blind to their heritage. They evoke the poverty of inhabitants and the fact they are mainly tenants and not owners, their main concern with security and daily life, the lack of "heritage preservation culture," the lack of education and knowledge (compared to France), the absence of civil society. Moroccan inhabitants themselves invoke economic reasons – materials are expensive – and tradition – to leave the house "as it has always been" – to account for the scarcity of works they undertake. Rather than declaring that inhabitants are either blind or aware of their heritage, or to be satisfied with an explanation in terms of habits, residence and familiarity that erode perception and awareness, I argue that human actors give attention to specific holds bestowed by things.
I then overview which holds give rise to the heritage qualification. I ask how inhabitants come to define houses as heritage. I argue that heritage is one quality allocated to the house among others. This quality goes together with other possible components of heritage actualisation, that is to say senses, affects, justifications and actions. Sensual relations are part of the daily relation with houses. Inhabitants and members of institutions see houses, they touch and smell them, hear sounds and taste some of their elements. Sensual perceptions also connect with memory, as many informants invoke memories to talk of their sensual relation with the house or declare that senses stir memory. This sensual environment is "blindingly obvious" – which may lead to some difficulties to put it into words. If some inhabitants consider senses as a skill, a capacity to feel senses and to talk about them, I rather link senses with reflexivity not in the ability to feel but in the capacity to talk about them. Affects are also at the core of the relation with houses. Inhabitants and members of institutions are in love with houses, feel good and secure inside them or they feel sad and
288 disappointed there, they evoke memories and express their nostalgia. Sometimes, they assert not having any affect for the house because they do not feel any attachment to it or because they mainly view houses in terms of categories and rules. However, the latter case does not preclude evoking memories or fearing a listing of the medina on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Although Moroccan and foreigners both have affects, none of the typologies of affects I draw show a clear distinction between them or between experts and non experts. On the basis of these typologies, it is difficult to determine which affects are indeed "heritage affects". Nostalgia and a feeling of loss can be defined as heritage affects but they may be felt outside the heritage context as well, are often insufficient to lead to heritage awareness and are not the only affects giving rise to heritage – there we also find empathy or indignation. As such, a strict focus on nostalgia to investigate heritage is somehow reductive. Members of institutions, academics, architects, foreign consultants, that is to say experts issuing permits, defining and applying rules and categories and carrying out projects, cannot, as they often are by scholars, be simply opposed to non experts or inhabitants in their relation with houses. Doing so, scholars lose much of the complex relation of expertise that other categories of actors may have developed. I showed that autodidact experts constitute an intermediary category. They have acquired and developed a synthetic knowledge about houses in the medina and the medina more generally, but they nonetheless remain unrecognized officially . This should be rectified, as intellectuals who are active in the preservation of the medina, tourist accommodation owners and managers of restoration firms, all have practical and theoretical knowledge, put learning at the core of their experience, and develop initiatives to preserve and promote heritage. Also, neither affects nor knowledge distinguishes experts, autodidact experts and non experts. In that view, expertise is an engagement with something and an ability "to speak in the name of" this thing, to use Tornatore’s (2010) idea. This engagement influences the kind of affect and knowledge that these three categories of actors develop in their experience of houses. The strength of expertise then depends on the stabilisation of the knowledge in categories and criteria that allow knowledge to circulate and last in time. Non experts tell anecdotes and personal memories about specific houses and refer to a knowledge transmitted orally. Autodidact experts read books, write blogs and give advice about their subject of interest. Experts refer to categories of houses and their associated rules, compare houses in the medina with remote locations (which they sometimes have not physically been to), and write academic or official documents. Their knowledge is more stable and may circulate without losing its relevance of efficiency, mostly due to their reliance on categories and institutions. This shared expertise between experts, autodidact experts and non experts does not prevent
289 the occurrence of contentious relations between human beings about and around houses. During the construction works, inhabitants have problems with the municipality regarding to the rules, with the workers concerning the materials and the techniques, and with their neighbours because of the noise that works entail. Members of institutions debate about the best way to undertake works, the materials to use and the destructions allowed in houses. Although some scholars turn conflicts into a methodological tool in the investigation of groups and their claims or trials to investigate the multiples worlds and their associated conventions, I argue that conflicts and trials do not characterise the daily life in houses and are only one tool of investigation to spot justifications – jealousy, economy, tourism, security, functionality, beauty memories, habits, a will of modernity, solidarity, education – and their conventions on the one hand, and actions – such as preservation, transmission or instrumentalisation – carried by human actors, on the other. Most importantly, conflicts and justifications shed light on what informants care for. When human actors care for something, they give it qualities. Qualification – "valuation" in Dewey’s (1939) terms or "instauration " in Latour’s (2012) terms – is the recognition, allocation and evaluation of a quality to things. A quality emerges in a specific situation, in the flow of experience, from the direct appreciation or depreciation of a situation, a thing, an event, a person and this appreciation/depreciation participates to its individualisation. Also, quality allocation is not exclusive and it could change in time. Inhabitants endow houses with physical and architectural qualities, with a life and a spirit, with beauty, with spirituality, with exceptionality and uniqueness, with representativeness, with an economic quality, with comfort and functionality, with a temporal quality, with tradition and with a heritage quality. These qualities are not allocated altogether, and the heritage quality generally connects – is generally bundled with – exceptionality, oldness, scarcity or representativeness. As heritage is a quality, the notion of heritage border (widely used by scholars without being theorized) understood as something that separates heritage and non heritage, loses its relevance. Things don’t cross a border but offer multiple holds, give and take multiples attentions, and invite to a plurality of attachments. As such one experience of houses (e.g. house as heritage) is not better than another (e.g. house as home). I rather showed the various ways inhabitants shape and give sense to their experience of houses. How one experience is assumed better than another is a different question I do not address in this dissertation. I however tend to follow Descola (2011) who suggests that humans do not qualify things at random but follow elementary inferences about the qualification of things and about the kind of links between these qualities. This overview of relations with the house leads me to the conclusion that the notion of attachment better explains the relations between human actors and things, for it insists on the double
290 relation between human beings and things – to attach and to be attached . As such, the notion of attachment, through an approach in terms of "relation with" and not "use of" a thing, discards approaches based solely on the instrumentalisation or the aestheticisation of a thing. This overview also shows the importance of affects and senses in the relation with houses. Sensual and affective relations shed light on what people care for – beauty, harmony, peaceful aural atmosphere, well being – and relates to the intimate relation between human actors and things who mutually affect/sense and are affected/felt. Senses and affects also play a role in the qualification of an object, on the development of knowledge about this object, and on the active involvement with this object. Finally, the sensual and affective relations with houses question the usual opposition between experts and non experts, and between Moroccan and foreigners, as houses constitute their common focus of attention in affective and sensual terms. Senses and affects don't automatically and necessarily lead to heritage. Together with actions and justifications, they are possible components – and not compulsory ingredients – in the actualisation of heritage. On the one hand, these possible components shed light on the continuum between houses and heritage. Houses and heritage share senses, affects and qualities such as beauty, life or conformity to the rules. In that view, the house as home doesn't exclude the house as heritage. On the other hand, a "plus of attention" distinguishes them – a quality emerges from an attention given to a thing. This "plus" generally comes from the concatenation of affects of loss, disappearance or threat; qualities related to time (oldness, tradition), purity (authenticity) and the object (its scarcity or typicality); and actions of preservation and transmission.
The investigation of the engagements with the materiality of houses and of their qualification as heritage shows several kinds of heritage: heritage as a daily object, heritage as label, heritage as an object to preserve, heritage as a definition or a category, heritage as a tool in development projects, heritage as a legal object, heritage as an object of research. To make sense of these multiple heritages, I argue that they are forms of heritage, a form being what remains similar through a succession of transformations and circulations (Latour, 2012). On the one hand, each form has its own features, its own conditions of truth and reality. On the other hand, they share similarities. I define these similar features as the "heritage fiction." Fiction is a common space in which relationships, exchanges, actions, meanings, affects, gestures and tones take place. This common place is composed, in the case of heritage, of a specific relationship to the past, an idea of culture as a specific entity, the importance of experts and their denial of unskilled actors, and moral principles such as transmission or universality. The heritage fiction finally suggests that no form of heritage, no quality of heritage is more valuable than another.
291 This fiction circulates – through the media, the work of experts, written texts – and is anchored – by qualification, by translation – in situation where it takes one or several forms. Material devices, visual and writing techniques ensure the stabilisation of what circulates and is anchored. Though this circulation and anchorage of heritage, it appears that the local and the global are qualities of what is located and framed in situation in the first case, and what intensively circulates in the second one. This approach of the local and the global sheds light on why UNESCO is a major actor in the circulation of the heritage fiction. UNESCO and its World Heritage apparatus is a macro actor sitting on many taken for granted black boxes and enrolling many other actors – World Bank, NGOs, states. It then creates an asymmetry with other actors and the forms of heritage they promote.
This dissertation now comes to its end. Its 300 some pages result from more than 4 years of work, reflection, travel, good and bad written reports, and discussion with multiple informants and scholars. I chose to close with the avenues of new discussion which this dissertation opened, and with the anthropological concepts which it allowed to deepen. Needless to say, this written report about houses in Fez and the heritage fiction is far from complete and calls for further investigation on the one hand and comparison with other sites on the other. Fez shares many similarities with other (World) Heritage sites, be it in its history or in the way human beings inhabit it. What is happening in Fez, Italian villages (Fabre and Iuso, 2009), Luang Pabang (Berliner, 2012), Rethemnos (Herzfeld, 1991), Marrakech (Kurzac Souali, 2006) suggest that similar – while not identical – investigations and a common framework would help us understand how the heritage fiction works. The focus on engagements with and attachments to houses sheds light on criteria informants referred to when judging an interior or when justifying an action. A concern for axiology compels one to correlate these criteria to values – or common goods. Beauty relates to the aesthetic, economy to the economic, personhood to liveliness. Authenticity is linked with purity in the sense of what is unchanged since its origins and what remains in conformity to its original state. Both oldness and tradition refer to continuity in time. It includes a strong memorial aspect, through memories, for instance. When talking about a quality of exceptionality and uniqueness, informants referred to scarcity, while they based their allocation on typicality in the case of representativeness. Originality connects with creativity in the case of furnishing, for instance. Usage underlines the functional quality. Finally, the religious, symbolist or spiritual quality of the house relates to spirituality. This focus on values shows that heritage is more than a work of experts as it is rooted in the daily life with which it shares similar values. It also invites to compare elements of heritage
292 between them or with other results of a qualification. Linking the forms of heritage to the modes of existences defined by Latour (2012) is another way to improve this dissertation. In his anthropology of the Moderns, Latour (2012) gets rid of the modernity fillers such as Nature, Society, Subject, Object or Economy and he sheds light on the various modes of existences, the various ontological ways of being. Each mode possesses its own criteria, its "conditions of felicity" – that is to say the conditions to say the truth – and one cannot judge one way of being with the features and criteria of another. Heritage as an object of preservation relates to the ontology of reproduction in which inheritance and transmission are two conditions of felicity. Heritage is then a line of force – and not a line of descent – as it does not reproduce itself but need human beings to last in time and to be passed on to the next generation. Correlated with heritage as a daily object, we find the ontology of habits that erode perception, favour routines and blur the qualities of things. Heritage as an object of research belongs to the mode of existence of metamorphosis , of the invisible world, of non human things that may possess or penetrate human beings. Some informants didn't hide their passion for heritage and many scholars link the birth and the awareness of heritage to a passionate nationalism, to the passionate awareness of identities and to the creation of national identities. Heritage metamorphosed in a national good and its protection, has inhabited and obnubilated many scholars involved in a public administration or in private associations. Heritage as a definition and a category relates to the mode of existence of reference, the mode of science, of knowledge, of criteria. Legal heritage is inscribed in the ontology of law, while its use as a tool in development projects makes him a being of technique with a punctual and short life and a huge capacity to change and to adapt to situations in order to accurately and efficiently fulfil a function. Finally, heritage as a label correlates to the political mode of existence concerned with unity making. However, I do push the comparison with Latour's (id.) modes of existence to the point of asserting that the various forms of heritage are ontologically distinct. I rather consider the various forms of heritage as concrete holds of the heritage fiction assorted with their own features and criteria. In that sense, forms of heritage are closer to the models of cities and worlds developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (1991). Nonetheless, I argue that, contrary to the separation involved by the worlds and cities as well as by the modes of existence, the various forms of heritage share similar features of the heritage fiction. Finally, this fiction, as well as the idea that heritage results from a "plus of attention," invites us to think of additional components surrounding heritage qualification. First of all, heritage qualification depends on a particular conception of temporality as linear succession. Time is irreversible and there is a rupture between the present and the vanishing past. As a consequence, it
293 is necessary to preserve objects from the past as they are supposed to disappear. An evolutionist and biological conception of culture underlies the idea of disappearance – cultures were born and die, and not all of them are able to preserve themselves – as well as by cultural relativism – cultures are different from each other. Materialism is also an additional component of heritage qualification. One has to foresee the possibilities of intervention (technical, temporal, economic) and to organize them in order to implement an action of preservation. Idealism means that some people think they are able to change the current state of things by their actions, ranging from a simple restoration to an involvement in an association or institution. Linked to this idealism are expertise and pedagogy. Expertise, because it is important to have knowledge about heritage, to have stabilised it in a kind of knowledge. Pedagogy because when acting, one intends to show the way, to be an example for others. Finally, in the case of experts more specifically, there is a certain self perception of being born at the wrong period and being alone against the world in the fight for preservation.
Throughout this dissertation, I intended to shed light and propose rather new empirical and theoretical ways to approach, investigate and make sense of "heritage." Scholars too often take for granted the heritage aspect of the element they study and content themselves with a list of problems and conflicts between levels of reality or human actors (physical injures on people and/or elements of heritage, conflicts around the definition of heritage, etc.). They also tend to oppose experts and non experts in their appraisal and their experience of heritage and to erase themselves from the heritage stage. However, my approach sheds light on heritage dynamics poorly investigated up to now in the field of heritage studies – such as heritage affects and knowledge or the expertise of experts, non experts and their intermediary categories. I assert that the researcher is fully integrated in the heritage qualification and circulation and has to take it into account to better describe and explain the heritage stage. Finally, I call for similar investigations in other World Heritage site for this comparative method to be refined and improved upon the approach I sketched out in the preceding pages.
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Bibliogaphy
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TALLANDIER Magali, 2008, Le classement Unesco favorise t il l'activité touristique et le développement économique local? Une étude économétrique du cas de la France , paper presented at the UNESCO conference in Septembre 2008 TAUVERON Albert, 1990, "Le propre et le sale vu par les habitants de Fès (Maroc)", in Les Cahiers d'URBAMA , 4: 7 13 TERRASSE Henri et HAINAUT Jean, 2006 [1924], Les Arts décoratifs au Maroc , Casablanca, Afrique Orient THARAUD Jérôme et Jean, 2008 [1930], Fès ou les bourgeois de l'Islam , Rabat, Marsam THÉVENOT Laurent, 2006, L'action au pluriel. Sociologie des régimes d'engagement , Paris, La Découverte THRIFT Nigel, 2009, "Understanding the Affective Spaces of Political Performance", in Mike Smith and al. (eds.), Emotion, Place and Culture , Burlington, Ashgate: 79 95 TONNA Jo, 1990, "The Poetics of Arab Islamic Architecture", in Muqarnas , 7: 182 197 TORNATORE Jean Louis, 1991, "Etre ouvrier à la Navale de Marseille", in Terrain , 16 : 88 105 – , 2000, "Le patrimoine comme objet frontière", in De la connaissance à la gestion du patrimoine, Actes des journées rencontres entre Parcs naturels régionaux et services de la Direction de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris – , 2001, "Les formes d'engagement dans l'activité patrimoniale. De quelques manières de s'accommoder au passé", paper presented at the conference "Les formes de l'engagement en Europe", Université de Metz, 5 au 7 décembre 2001 –, 2004, "Beau comme un haut fourneau : Sur le traitement en monument des restes industriels", in L’Homme , 170: 79 116 –, 2007, "Qu’est ce qu’un ethnologue politisé ? Expertise et engagement en socio anthropologie de l’activité patrimoniale", in Ethnographiques.org , 12, on http://www.ethnographiques.org/2007/Tornatore , 10/04/2013 –, 2010, "L'esprit de patrimoine", in Terrain , 55: 106 127 TOURI Abdelaziz, HASSANI Mohammed and BARBATO Gian Carlo, 1999, Le projet pilote de restauration et de réhabilitation du Palais Dar Adiyel à Fès. Un exemple remarquable de coopération internationale tripartite , Paris, UNESCO TOURNIER Michel, 1986, La Goutte d'Or , Paris, Gallimard TREMON Anne Christine, 2012, "Que faire du couple local/global?", in Social Anthropology , 20(3): 250 266 TREPOS Jean Yves, 2002, "L'expertise comme équipement politique de la société civile", in Questions de communication , 2: 7 18 TUNBRIDGE John and ASHWORTH Gregory, 1996, Dissonant Heritage: the Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict , Chichester, Wiley TURTINEN Jan, 2000, "Globalizing Heritage – On UNESCO and the Transnational Construction of a World Heritage", SCORE working paper 12 Stockholm: Stockholm centre for organizational research
UNDP and Royaume du Maroc, 1992, Sauvegarde de la ville de Fès , Rapport Phase 4, Rabat, Ministère de l'Intérieur
309 UNESCO, 1972, "Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage", on http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention en.pdf UNESCO, 2011 [2010], Preparing World Heritage Nominations, on http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity 643 1.pdf , 11/05/2012 UNESCO, 1992 2013, "Medina of Fez", on http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/170/
VAN EDE Yolanda, 2009, "Sensuous anthropology: sense and sensibility and the rehabilitation of skill", in Anthropological Notebook , 15 (2): 61 75 VANNINI Phillip and al., 2012, The senses in self, society and culture: a sociology of the senses, New York, Routledge VELLINGA Marcel, 2006, "The inventiveness of Tradition: Vernacular Architecture and the Future", in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture , 12 (2): 115 128 VENKATESAN Soumhya, 2009, "Rethinking agency: persons and things in the heterotopia of ‘traditional Indian craft’ ", in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , 15 (1): 78 95 VERKAAK Oscar, 2012, "Designing the anti mosque: identity, religion and affect in contemporary European mosque design", in Social Anthropology , 20(2): 161 176 VESCHAMBRE Vincent, 2005, "Effacement et réappropriation de l'habitat populaire dans les centres anciens patrimonialisés : les exemples du Vieux Mans et de la Doutre à Anger", in Maria Gravari Barbas (ed.), Habiter le patrimoine. Approches, enjeux, vécus, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes: 245 264 –, 2008, Traces et mémoires urbaines, enjeux sociaux de la patrimonialisation et de la démolition , Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes VIOLIER Philippe, 2005, "Introduction ", in Maria Gravari Barbas (ed.), Habiter le patrimoine. Approches, enjeux, vécus, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes: 365 71 VO SANG Xuan Lan, 2004, "Habiter le patrimoine et y recevoir : l’exemple de Hoi An, patrimoine architectural mondial du Vietnam", in Scienc’@ction , on http://www.vn.refer.org/science action/article.php3?id_article=94 , 29/01/2013
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ZENEIDI HENRY Djemila, 2003, "La rue domestiquée. Reformulation de la notion d'espace domestique à travers l'expérience des SDF", in Béatrice Collignon and Jean François Staszak (eds.), Espaces domestiques. Construire, habiter, représenter, Rosny sous Bois, Bréal: 20 32 ZERHOUNI Selma, 2004, "Ces vieilles maisons à vendre", in Architecture du Maroc , 17: 9
310 ZOUILAI Kaddour, 1990, Des voiles et des serrures : de la fermeture en Islam , Paris, L'Harmattan
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Living in a World Heritage Site: ethnography of the Fez medina (Morocco)
Appendix
A dissertation by Manon Istasse submitted to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Free University of Brussels for the degree of Doctor in Anthropology
Members of the jury: David Berliner (University of Brussels) Mathieu Hilgers (University of Brussels) Jean Louis Genard (University of Brussels) Christophe Brumann (Mack Planck Institute in Halle) Lynn Meskell (University of Stanford)
September 2013
Glossary
'aïd el Kebir: Feast of the Sacrifice. Religious celebration to honour the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his young first born son Ismail as an act of submission to God. It takes places on the 10th day of Dhu al Hijjah (last month of the Muslim calendar) and lasts for four days.
'alim (pl. 'ulamā): scholar holding religious knowledge. adul: Islamic traditional notary. amel: cf. bacha. amine: head of guilds.
āthar: historical monument. bab: door or city gate. babuch: Oriental shoes with flat soles and without stiffener. bacha: City governor. bejmat: ceramic rectangular tile. bakchich: bribe. baladiya: commune. bartal: alcove opened on the patio. bastila: hot puff pastry filled with pigeons, almonds, onions and raisins. bejmat: enamelled half brick. beldi: traditional, from the country (bled). bīt lma: bathroom. borj: tower, fortified building. bulfaf: liver brochette whose pieces of meat are rolled into a fat membrane and dipped into cumin and salt. bust d dār: patio, central courtyard. charīf (pl. churafā): descend from the Prophet Mohammed and his wife Fatima. chemachech : decorative bay window above doors and rectangular windows through which light is supposed to enter.
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chikhat: in the past, mistress of a lord. Nowadays, chikhats are known as professional singers. Nonetheless, singing is not recognised as a profession for women in Morocco, and is often associated with prostitution. dahir: since the Protectorate, legislative or administrative act through which the Sultan endows his decisions with obligations and duties. dār (pl. diour): house without garden. daret: practices of families and neighbours to visit each other derb: street, dead end. dessāssa: of 30 to 40 centimetres of rammed down earth resting on wooden plates to separate two floors. dhikr: evocation and repetition of the name of Allah. fassi: from Fez. fellah: peasant, rural. foq: floor. frach: low banquette. funduk: storage buildings and hotel for merchants in cities of commercial importance. gabbass (pl. gabbassa): plaster craftsman. gabs: carved and/or painted plaster under the form of friezes and panels, with geometric, floral or calligraphic designs. gaïza: visible wood beam on a ceiling, supporting the warqa. gaouri(ya): Westerner. ghassoul : natural clay used in cosmetics to wash the hair or to clean the skin.
Habous: Institution: Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs. Goods: perpetual and inalienable endowment of an immovable property whose revenue earnings are devoted to social charity work ( waqf khayri ) or to specific beneficiaries ( waqf ahli ).
Hadīth: words of the Prophet Mohammed, and by extension, a book related to the behaviours and sayings of the Prophet. They constitute a tool to understand the Koran.
Haïq: White veil or mask in lace covering the bottom of the face of women in North Africa.
Hanout: shop.
Halqa: literally ring. Architecture: open roof, square opening to the sky at the top of the house
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above the central courtyard, surrounded by woodwork, letting air and light entering the house.
Hammam (pl. Hammamat): public bath. By extension: bathroom. hawma: neighbourhood. jabador: large pants and assorted shirt. jellaba: long dress with short or long sleeves and a hat, worn by men and women in North Africa. jief: lime. jiha: main neighbourhood. kaftan: women dress , usually cotton or silk ankle length garment with long sleeves nowadays worn for rituals and ceremonies. kānūn: brazier, coal burner in clay. khyata: solid brick.
Hchouma: shame. kheddama: lihoudi: Jewish. litham: veil hiding the inferior part of the face. m'allem (pl.m3almine): master craftsman. madrasa: see medersa. maghtoub: mortar of lime and sand. makhzen: literally warehouse. Ancient feudalist state predating the French Protectorate. Nowadays: government of the King. By extension: elite centred around the king and consisting of royal notables, businessmen, wealthy landowners, tribal leaders, top ranking military personnel, security service bosses, and other well connected members. malhun: Melodic poem inspired from Andalus music, urban sung poetry performed by man of craftsmen’s guilds. masriya: small outhouse with two floors or isolated room on the rooftop terrace. medersa (pl. madrasa): Koranic school providing an accommodation to foreign that is to say alien to the city students. medjless: communitarian council. melk: private ownership.
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mellaH: salt. Also, Jewish area in Moroccan cities. menzeh: pavilion in a garden or isolated room on the rooftop. mohtassib: commercial provost marshal. mokhzani: cf. moqaddem. moqaddem: representative of the Government in a neighbourhood. mucharabieh: lattice wood. Wood, metal, stone or marble surface with an openwork design bringing air and light. muhandis: mediator between the owner and workers. muqarnas: honeycomb. nakch: painted drawing. neijjārīn (sg. neijjār): carpenters. niqab: integral veil. nzaha: picnic outside the city walls. oued: river. qadi: Islamic law judge. qaïd: Governor of a city or chief of a neighbourhood. qaïda: literally, base, foundation. By extension, stable social rules. qdim: old, ancient. rtej: piece of decorated wood with a kiosk shape. roumi: industrial, foreign, in opposition to beldi (traditional, from the country). It firstly designated Romans before being applied, pejoratively, to Europeans and Christians. roxa: authorization. sahrij: pool, central fountain in the courtyard of a house or a mosque. sefl: ground floor. serual: pants with a low crutch close to the knees worn by man. setwan: corridor in elbow.
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sqaya: mural fountain in the courtyard of a house or in the street sūq (pl. suqūq): (open air) market. tadelakt: coating made of lime and water, shiny and waterproof. tajine: Dish with stewed vegetables and meat. taqāfa: culture (knowledge, know how, practices). taqālīd: traditions. By extension, way of life. tarbuch: red hat in felt. testir: geometric interlacing radiating from a central star. turāth: civilizational elements of knowledge, culture, and intellect that are said to have been passed down from the Arabs of the past to the Arabs of the present. It is a classical Arabic and not Moroccan Arabic – term used to speak of cultural heritage, be it tangible or intangible. turiq : floral decoration pattern. ryad (sg. rawda): house with an internal garden in the patio or behind. warqa: layer of wood supporting earth and sand separating two floors. warth: familial inheritance. wilaya: regional district. zawiya: Muslim religious building close to the tomb of a Saint. zelij: tile mosaic following geometric designs and covering grounds and walls, enamelled small tile of clay of various shapes and colours. zerzaï: porter. zuin: beautiful. zwāq: painter.
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Informants
NAME NATIONALITY AGE OCCUPATION INTERVIEWS (formal in discussions) 2010 Abdelaziz Morocco French ~ 40 Own a guest house 20/10/2010; 23/02/2011 Abdelhaq Moroccan 54 Belt maker 28/04/2011; 03/05/2011; 15/05/2011; 22/05/2011 Adbelhay Moroccan 36 Land owner, Ziyarates membre 25/07/2010 ; 27/07/2010 ; 04/08/2010 ; 20/10/2010 ; Abderahim Moroccan. Born in 38 Manager in a restaurant 08/06/2011 the medina. Lives in the New City Abdu Moroccan 53 Own a café and a guest house 08/10/2010; Ahmed Moroccan 39 Own a guest house 29/06/2010 Aïcha Moroccan 41 Employee in a guest house 11/02/2011 Amal Moroccan 37 Primary teacher, Ziyarates 16/07/2010; 23/07/2010; landlady 10/10/2010 Amélie French. Arrived in 46 Librarian, own a guest house 10/01/2010; 25/06/2010; Fez in 2002 29/06/2010; 12/07/2010; Amin Moroccan ~ 40 Own a home stay, squire 25/07/2010; 27/07/2010; 04/08/2010; 20/10/2010 Antoine French. Arrived in 44 Retired (fighter pilot), manage 08/04/2011; 11/04/2011; Fez in 2005. Left in a restoration firm 13/04/2011; 25/04/2011; 2012 16/05/2011; 22/05/2011; 30/05/2011 Asmae Moroccan 24 Employee in a guest house 09/02/2011 Aziz Moroccan 34 Manage a guest house, degree 20/07/2010; 13/01/2010 in hotel business Benoit French. Arrived in 52 Retired (teacher in economics), 08/07/2010; 27/07/2010; Fez in 2009 own a guest house 03/08/2010; 10/08/2010; 30/09/2010; 16/10/2010; 18/10/210; 09/01/2010; Catherine French ~ 50 Architect hired for the 18/05/2011; 06/06/2011 Rochant Millenium Corporation Project Christina American. Arrived 58 English teacher 02/10/2010; 12/10/2010; in Fez in 2006 12/11/2010 Christophe French. Do not live ~ 55 Archaeologist 14/06/2012 Boulle in Fez Cyril French. Arrived in ~ 40 Own a guest house 03/12/2009; 12/01/2010 Fez in 2007. Left in 2012 David American. Arrived 56 Director of the American 22/01/2010; 01/10/2010; Amster in Fez in 1996 Language Institute in Fez 10/10/2010; 16/10/2010; 17/10/2010 Diya Moroccan. Born in 42 Unemployed 12/12/2010; 15/12/2010 Oujda Emma Australian 62 Retired (nurse), own a tourist 03/07/2010; 14/07/2010 accommodation Fatima Moroccan. Live in 61 Architect, own a guest house 02/02/2010; 26/10/2010 the New City Fatimzohra Moroccan 27 Unemployed 18/03/2011 Fettah Moroccan 51 Linguist, craftsman, own a 04/02/2010; guest house 05/02/2010; 01/05/2010; 04/05/2010; 31/05/2011 Fouad Moroccan. Live in ~ 45 Architect, director of the 17/05/2010 Serghini the New City ADER Frederica Spanish. Arrived in 33 Employee in a NGO 08/04/2011 Fez in 2009. Left in 2011
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Gigi French. Arrived in 59 Beautician, own a guest house 21/11/2009; 19/12/2009; Fez in 2004 09/01/2010; 03/05/2010; 06/05/2010; 11/06/2010; 26/06/2010; 08/07/2010; 11/07/2010; 17/07/2010; 25/09/2010; 28/09/2010; 20/05/2011; 17/06/2011 Guy French. Arrived in 56 Retired, own a tourist 13/11/2010; 01/02/2011 Fez in 2003 accommodation Hamid Moroccan ~ 55 Shopkeeper 20/04/2011 Hamza Moroccan 43 Own a guest house 14/06/2010; 10/12/2010; 19/12/2010; Hannah Irish. Arrived in Fez ~ 50 Librarian, own a guest house 17/12/2009; 15/01/2010; in 2010 25/04/2010; 17/06/2010; 11/07/2010; 06/08/2010; 12/10/2010 Hassan Moroccan. Live in 42 Archaeologist, work at the 30/09/2010; 01/10/2010; the New City Inspection of Historical 16/11/2010; 24/01/2011; Monuments 30/03/2011 Jawad Moroccan 33 Hair cutter 04/02/2010; 22/03/2011 Jean Marc French. Arrived in Physiotherapist, own a guest 08/01/2010; 03/05/2010; Fez in 2002 ~ 55 house 27/10/2010; 12/01/2011; 16/03/2011; 17/06/2011 Jean Paul French. Arrived in Architect 10/05/2010; 18/09/2010; Ichter Fez in 1960 75 24/06/2011 Jean Pierre French. Arrived in 38 Retired (professional soldier), 01/08/2010 Fez in 2009. Died in own a guest house 2011 Kate American. Arrived 38 Training in cooking, own a 17/09/2010 in Fez in 2001 guest house Khadija Moroccan 21 Student, Ziyarates landlady 11/12/2010 Laïla Skalli Moroccan. Born in 39 Architect 27/01/2010; 21/01/2011 the medina. Lives in Rabat Lamya Moroccan. Lives in ~ 45 Technician at the ADER 15/12/2011 the New City Loïc French. Arrived in Civil servant, own a guest 19/01/2010; 15/06/2010; Fez in 2010 49 house 20/06/2010; 23/06/2010; 30/06/2010; 13/07/2010; 18/07/2010; 05/08/2010; 08/08/2010; 24/09/2010; 06/12/2010; 13/12/2010; 16/01/2011; 16/03/2011; 28/03/2011; Lotfi Moroccan. Lives in 34 Computer engineer 13/02/2011 the New City Malek Moroccan. Born in Architect, employee at the 28/10/2010; 06/06/2011 Rabat. Live in the 42 commune New City Marc and French. Arrived in Retired (retail trader, and 13/03/2011; 27/04/2011; Fançois Fez in 2008 46 educator), own a tourist 31/05/2011 and accommodation 48 Marie French. Arrived in Architect 27/09/2010 Fez in 2005 41 Helen British. Arrived I ~ 60 Travel writer, manage a renting 18/06/2010 Ranger Fez in 2003 agency Mehdi Moroccan. Live I the 29 Employee in a guest house 14/06/2010; 24/06/2010 New City Mehdi Abadi Moroccan. Lives in 39 Own two guest houses 03/02/2010
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the New City Meriem Moroccan. Lives in 22 Architect 25/03/2011 the New City Michel French. Arrived in 56 Retired 18/05/2011 Fez in 2006. Mainly lives in France Mohamed Moroccan 34 Unemployed, Ziyarates home 14/12/2010 stay Mohamed Mauritanian ~ 60 Expert in the Culture 01/07/2010 Ould Katthar Programme for UNESCO in Rabat Nora British. Arrived in 26 Own a guest house 16/12/2010 Fez in 2009. Married to a Moroccan Nordin Moroccan 29 Employee in a guest house 05/06/2011 Olivier Belgian. Arrived in ~35 Former consultant in 07/05/2010; 11/05/2010 Fez in 2009 economics Omar Moroccan. Lives in 36 Employee in a guest house 03/03/2011; 04/03/2011 the medina and the New City Perrine French. Arrived in ~ 40 Own a tourism agency 23/06/2010; 13/07/2010 Fez in 2007 Philippe French. Arrived in 43 Art historian, managed an 13/08/2010; 16/08/2010; Fez in 2003 estate agency in Fez 25/09/2010 Pierre French. Born in 63 Retired (former soldier). Own 12/05/2010; 15/052010 Casablanca. Arrived a tourist accommodation and a in Fez in 2003 restaurant in Fez.
Rachid Moroccan. Lives in ~ 40 Architect 03/06/2011 Halaoui the New City Ruth German. Arrived in 52 Psychologist, own a guest 07/01/2010; 21/01/2010; Fez in 2005 house 06/05/2010; 03/06/2010; 07/07/2010; 28/09/0210; 30/09/2010; 04/10/2010; 11/11/2010;
Saad Moroccan 43 Architect, work a the 20/01/2011 UNESCO office in Rabat Sarah French. Arrived in 38 Fired (trade) 24/03/2011 2010 Simon French. Arrived in 53 Own a guest house 01/02/2010 Fez in 2004 Steeve American. Arrived 48 Designer, own a tourist 19/01/2010; 30/01/2011 in Fez in 2002 accommodation
Talal Moroccan ~55 Work at the CRT, own a guest 22/06/2010 house Tayyibi Moroccan. Born in 35 Architect, director of the No formal interview Rabat. Lives in the National School of New City Architecture in Fez Valentin French. Arrived in 44 Airline pilot, manage a 21/09/2010; Fez in 2005 restoration firm Youssef Moroccan 71 Own a guest house 20/05/2010
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Appendix
1. Pictures showed 1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
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2. Maps
Map 1
Map 2
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3. The Campini/Boujloud/French gate
Campini gate before 1916. Postcard
Boujloud gate after 1916. Postcard
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French gate in 2010. Credit : Manon Istasse
4. Déclaration de Sa Majesté le Roi Hassan II, fait au Palais Royal de Rabat, le 8 ramadan 1400 (21 juillet 1980)
Le rôle historique que le ville de Fès a assumé pour consolider la civilisation marocaine et répandre les lumières de le foi et de la science, la valeur inestimable de son patrimoine artistique riche de tant que chef d'oeuvre que le génie marocain a su produire, qu'il s'agisse de la conception architecturale et urbanistique, de la décoration des mosquées et des médersas; des créations d'un merveilleux artisanat et de la parfaite organisation des souks, objets de la fierté de la culture arabo islamique, nous fait une obligation de considérer que la restauration et la sauvegarde de la ville de Fès font partie des missions que Nous devons accomplir avec l'aide et l'assistance d'Allah. Nos ancêtres se sont préoccupés de l'édification et de la promotion de Fès. Dans le passé, Fès avait atteint l'apogée de la civilisation et était devenue un haut lieu de rencontre de tous ceux qui étaient en quête de savoir, un centre de rayonnement culturel et une source féconde de la création artistique. Si les années ont terni quelque peu sa splendeur et si des signes de vieillissement se manifestent dans le corps de ses édifices et de ses monuments, Notre devoir aujourd'hui est de la faire revivre et de la rénover afin qu'elle retrouve ses antiques traditions. Nous devons œuvrer pour que ses fissures soient réparées et que sa vie reprenne son cours normal. Ainsi se dresseront de nouveau dans Fès les piliers de la civilisation sur lesquels une aube nouvelle de science et de sagesse répande sa lumière. Notre tâche devient agréable quand nous constatons que le monde entier s'associe à notre effort en reconnaissant la cité de Fès comme un patrimoine universel. C'est ainsi que la Conférence générale de l'Unesco, dans sa session de 1976 à Nairobi, a adopté une résolution faisant de la sauvegarde de la ville de Fès un devoir qui incombe à toute l'humanité. Il s'en suivit l'Appel que le Directeur général de l'Unesco, Monsieur Amadou Mahtar M'BOW, a adressé à la communauté internationale pour la restauration et le renouveau de Fès. A ce propos, Nous rappelons à Notre peuple et à Nos amis qu'en aidant à rendre à Fès sa place dans le concert des civilisations, ils participeront à la renaissance de la gloire éternelle de Notre Patrie et
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au développement de la culture islamique sur cette terre d'honneur et de dignité. Aussi devons Nous donner à Notre Gouvernement des instructions pour qu'il considère le projet de Fès comme une préoccupation primordiale et pour qu'il accorde une attention particulière dans le cadre de ses responsabilités relatives: 1 aux programmes d'équipement et de l'habitat, 2 à la préservation du patrimoine culturel, 3 au développement de l'art, de la culture et de la pensée, 4 et à la diffusion des enseignements de l'Islam. Le Maroc doit demeurer le pays de l'authenticité véritable, le vrai chemin qui mène à al réalisation des ambitions de notre siècle de progrès et de prospérité.
Declaration of His Majesty the King Hassan II, in the Royal Palace of Rabat on the 8 th ramadan 1400 (21 st July 1980)
The city of Fes played an historical role to strengthen the Moroccan civilization and to spread the lights of faith and science, to strengthen the priceless value of its artistic heritage in so many works of art produced by the Moroccan genius, be it the architectural and urban design, the decoration in mosques and Koranic schools, to strengthen the wonderful craft realisations and the perfect organisation of souks. These sources of pride in the Arab Islamic culture make compulsory to regard the restoration and the safeguard of the city of Fez among the missions We have to fulfil with the help and the support of Allah. Our ancestors built and promoted Fez. In the past, Fez reached its civilisation apogee and had become a mecca for those seeking for knowledge, a centre for cultural activity and a fertile source of artistic creation. If her splendour somewhat tarnished over time and if her buildings and monuments show ageing signs in their bodies, it is Our duty today to bring her back to life and to renovate her for her to retrieve her antique traditions. We have to strive for repairing her cracks and for bringing her back to a normal way of life. As a consequence, the pillars of civilisation from which to diffuse the light of a new dawn of science and wisdom will stand anew in Fez. Our task is even more pleasant when we notice the entire world join our effort by recognizing the city of Fez as a universal heritage. The UNESCO General Conference, in its 1976 session in Nairobi, passed a resolution making of the safeguard of the city of Fez a duty lying with the entire humanity. Followed a call the UNESCO General Director, Mister Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, geared toward the international community for the restoration and the renewal of Fez. We remind to Our people and to Our friends that with helping in bringing Fez back in the concert of civilisations, they will participate to the recognition of the eternal glory of Our Country and to the development of Islamic culture on this earth of honour and dignity. Consequently, We should give to Our Government instructions for him to consider the Fez project as a priority and for him to give a specific importance to in the context of its relative responsibilities to: 1. housing and facilities programs, 2. cultural heritage preservation, 3. the development of art, culture and though, 4. the spread of Islam teaching. Morocco has to stay the country of genuine authenticity, the real way leading to the realisation of ambitions in our century of progress and prosperity.
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5. Change and immutability
Medersa Bouanania, 1917 http://archnet.org/library/images/one image.jsp?location_id=1410&image_id=12160
Medersa Bouanania, 2012. Credit : M. Istasse
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6. Ziyarates’ Charters
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7. Master Plan (1997)
0PREAMBULE
LE REGLEMENT D’AMENAGEMENT accompagne le PLAN D’AMENAGEMENT, document graphique dont il est indissociable. Les dispositions de ce document s’appliquent aux actions de restauration, de réhabilitation, de consolidation, aux constructions nouvelles et rénovation ou reconstruction ainsi qu’aux modifications ou extensions des installations et constructions existantes. Les lotissements ne feront d’aucune façon objet du présent règlement qu’exceptionnellement et suivant des restrictions variables d'une zone à l'autre. Toute autorisation de construire, de modifier ou de restaurer, délivrée avant la date d’approbation du présent plan d’aménagement continue à être valide si elle n’est pas à l’encontre de ses orientations. LE REGLEMENT D’AMENAGEMENT est établi conformément : •au Dahir N° 1 92 31 du 15 Hija 1412 (17 Juin 1992) portant promulgation de la loi N° 12 90 relative à l’urbanisme. •au Dahir N° 1 92 7 du 15 Hija 1412 (17 Juin 1992) portant promulgation de la loi 25 90 relative aux lotissements, groupes d’habitations et morcellements. • à l’Arrêté Viziriel du 22 Joumada 1372 (9 Mars 1953) portant réglementation de la hauteur sous plafond des locaux à usage d’habitation. • au Décret N° 2 64 445 du 21 Chaabane 1384(26 décembre 1964) définissant les zones d’habitat économique. • au Dahir N°: 1 80 341 (17 Safar) portant promulgation de la loi 22 80 relative à la conservation des monuments historiques, des sites, des inscriptions des objets d'art et d'antiquité. •Il est complété par l’Arrêté Municipal Permanent (A.M.P.) qui définit les Règles de construction, de Sécurité et d’Hygiène.
1. TITRE I : DISPOSITIONS GENERALES
ARTICLE 1. CHAMP D’APPLlCATlON Le présent Règlement d’Aménagement s’applique à la totalité du territoire défini et délimité au Plan d’Aménagement de la Médina. Ce territoire intéresse les Communes de Fès Médina et Méchouar Fès Jdid. Les parties du territoire de chacune de ces communes auxquelles s’applique le présent Règlement sont délimitées sur les plans d’Aménagement généraux de ces communes.
ARTICLE 2. DIVISION DU TERRITOIRE EN ZONES ET SECTEURS Le territoire couvert par le Plan d’Aménagement est divisé en zones urbanistiquement intégrées dont les caractéristiques et les règles sont définies ci après : au TITRE II pour les zones urbaines : Zone M1 la zone de restauration urbaine, Zone M2 La zone de réhabilitation urbaine, Zone M3 La zone de rénovation urbaine, Zone IM, Zone E la zone d’habitat continu individuel ou collectif, Zones 10B La zone de restructuration, Zone AM zone des grands équipements, au TITRE III pour : Les actions ponctuelles au TITRE IV pour :
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la réorganisation des activités au TITRE V pour : Les zones de protection de l’enceinte et du site de la Médina, repérées par les lettres RAM et RBM.
ARTICLE 3. ZONES NON SOUMISES A REGLEMENTATION Ne sont pas soumises à la réglementation du Plan d’Aménagement, les zones ci après, simplement délimitées au plan : • La zone du PALAIS ROYAL • Les zones d’installation militaire.
ARTICLE 4. VOIES ET PARCS DE STATIONNEMENT Toutes les voies existantes sont représentées sur le Plan d’Aménagement, mais seules les voies à aménager et les voies à créer pour la circulation motorisée sont répertoriées. L’indication portée sur le P.A. est la suppression de la totalité des parcelles touchées par l’acquisition en vue de la libération de l’emprise (sans précision de la dimension de l’emprise à réaliser effectivement). Pour les voies existantes figurant sur le plan, mais non répertoriées, l’emprise actuelle est maintenue et ne peut être modifiée, sinon ponctuellement et le long de voies indiquées au Plan d’Aménagement pour être des « voies d’urgence » et dans le but de permettre le passage de véhicules de service public spécialement adaptés. Les parcs de stationnement publics existants et à créer sont figurés et la nomenclature indique leur nature : parc en surface, parc souterrain sur un ou plusieurs niveaux, parc en étages (ou silo)...ainsi que les conditions de leur intégration (plantations, mur de clôture...). La hauteur d’un parc en étages ne peut excéder la hauteur maximale autorisée pour d’autres constructions dans le secteur dans lequel se situe ce parc. Le stationnement en toiture non couverte est interdit.
ARTICLE 5. EQUIPEMENTS PUBLICS Le Plan d’Aménagement affecte ou réserve des terrains pour des équipements publics de différentes natures. Les nomenclatures en annexe précisent, qu’il s’agisse d’équipements existants ou d’équipements à créer, leur nature et leur affectation. Les règles de hauteur et d’implantation par rapport aux limites séparatives, qui sont fixées dans le secteur où un équipement public est situé, s’appliquent à l’intérieur des remparts des quartiers anciens de la Médina (Fès El Bali et Fès Jdid), la réalisation d’équipements publics nouveaux sur terrains déjà construits est tenue, comme les autres occupations du sol, à s’inscrire dans les volumes existants. A cette fin, des dérogations éventuelles aux règles et normes de réalisation de ces équipements seront accordées.
ARTICLE 6. ESPACES VERTS PUBLICS Les espaces verts publics : grands espaces plantés ou non, à usage récréatif ou simplement paysagers, parcs et jardins publics, squares, places plantées,...etc., sont indiqués au Plan d’Aménagement et à la nomenclature. Sur les terrains affectées à ces espaces verts publics, toute construction est interdite, à l’exception de petits édicules indispensables pour la gestion, l’hygiène et l’entretien, sous la réserve que leurs hauteurs ne dépassent pas 3,50 m, que leurs superficies ne représentent pas plus de 5 % de la surface totale du terrain (sans dépasser 40 m²), et que leur volume soit minimal pour la fonction à remplir et que leur implantation et leur aspect s’intègrent à l’aménagement paysager de l’espace considéré. Les Communes de Fès Médina et de Fès Jdid Méchouar sont autorisées à exercer un droit de préemption sur cession de parcelle non bâtie ou en ruine, dans le but de reconstruire l’édifice abandonné, de créer un espace vert accessible au public ou, après enquête favorable, un équipement collectif de quartier.
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ARTICLE 7. TYPES D’OCCUPATION OU D’UTILISATION INTERDITS Sont interdits dans les limites du Plan d’Aménagement de la Médina de Fès, les types d’occupation ou d’utilisation du sol ci après, auxquelles s’ajoutent les interdictions complémentaires stipulées dans les différentes zones: • Les établissements industriels classés de l’ère et 2ème catégories, ainsi que les établissements industriels classés ou non classés et les dépôts représentant un danger quelconque, que ceux ci soient liés ou non aux activités artisanales ou commercialisées dans le secteur, a fortiori toute extension d’activités classées et de l’espèce existantes. • Toute activité industrielle ou artisanale ou extension de telles activités, en dehors des secteurs affectés à l’activité dans le Plan d’Aménagement, installée dans une construction inadaptée à sa nature ou causant des nuisances de vibration ou de pollution sous toutes ses formes et incompatibles avec l’occupation du secteur. • L’ouverture de carrières, les affouillements et exhaussement de sol autres que ceux que prévoit le Plan d’Aménagement. • Les constructions précaires, à l’exclusion des abris temporaires de chantier, requis pour des travaux importants et qui doivent être démolis en fin de chantier. • Tous travaux confortatifs, tant intérieurs qu’extérieurs, sur des constructions dont la démolition est prévue par le plan d’aménagement à des fins de salubrité, d’élargissement ou d’ouverture de voies. Exception est faite des dispositions à prendre obligatoirement pour éviter le risque d’effondrement sur la voie publique. • Les terrains de stationnement de caravanes ou de campings. • Les ateliers ou garages d’entretien automobile, stations de distribution de carburant, sauf à proximité immédiate des portes de la Médina et sous réserve d’une intégration parfaite justifiée à la suite d’une étude d’impact détaillée.
ARTICLE 8. TYPES D’OCCUPATION SOUMIS A DES CONDITIONS SPECIALES • L’installation ou l’extension limitée des activités commerciales, productives et artisanales conformément au plan d’aménagement et aux plans sectoriels, sous condition de ne pas créer de nuisance à leur environnement immédiat (bruit, vibrations, trépidation, poussières, odeurs, émanations nuisibles ou dangereuses, vapeurs ou fumées, altération des eaux, danger d’incendie ou d’explosion, action corrosive, en particulier). • Les types d’activités autorisés sont précisés dans les articles relatifs aux activités. • L’installation ou l’extension d’activités commerciales ou productives autorisées par le Plan d’Aménagement restent néanmoins soumises à autorisation des autorités compétentes conformément à la réglementation en vigueur . Cette autorisation peut être subordonnée à la réalisation des travaux ou l’observance de dispositions de nature à éliminer les nuisances, phoniques ou autres, créées par l’activité, ou encore la gêne causée au voisinage par les conditions d’approvisionnement.
ARTICLE 9. OCCUPATION TEMPORAIRE DU DOMAINE PUBLIC Toute occupation du domaine public est soumise à autorisation des municipalités concernées. Elle est en tout état de cause assortie de l’obligation de libérer immédiatement l’emprise publique à l’annonce d’une intervention d’urgence qu’elle soit (incendie, transport sanitaire, intervention de la protection civile....).
ARTICLE 10. AMENAGEMENT DES ACCES Les aménagements des accès, mentionnés dans le plan d’aménagement seront exécutés dans le cadre des plans de détail les concernant. Il s’agit des accès suivants : • L ’accès Ain Azliten avec ses deux branches Talaa Kbira et Derb Ameur, • l’accès Oued Zhoun, • l’accès Bin Lamdoun,
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• l’accès R’cif • l’accès par les deux antennes dites Douh, • l’éventuelle liaison entre les deux antennes Douh(liaison mise à l’étude) • la trame des accès desservant les quartiers situés à l’Est de la Médina ( Bab Ftouh, Bab Khoukha et Sidi Boujida)
ARTICLE 11. VOIES D’ACCES D’URGENCE Le réseau de voirie d’urgence mentionné sur le plan d’aménagement nécessite certains élargissements aux points d’étranglement. Ceci pour permettre le passage des engins de lutte contre l’incendie et de la protection civile en particulier. Les voies d’accès d’urgence ne pourraient en aucun cas comporter de marches ni d’obstacles rendant difficile l’accès des engins de lutte contre l’incendie et ceux de la protection civile. Ils feront l’objet d’un arrêté d’alignement conformément aux dispositions réglementaires en vigueur.
ARTICLE 12. RESEAUX DIVERS a. Le réseau des sources et puits Le réseau principal d’eau de source alimentant les équipements et fontaines publics et aboutissant aux ouvrages de distribution aux maisons est à réhabiliter, avec l’ensemble des ouvrages hydrauliques l’accompagnant, ceci tout en assurant : • L’aménagement du captage de la source : • Chambre de captage, •Zone de protection d’un rayon de 30m, où aucune source de contamination ne doit se localiser, avec possibilité de l’étendre s’il y a des sources de contamination ascendantes. •La désinfection continue de l’eau dans le cas ou elle sera destinée à la consommation humaine. Seule l'Autorité gouvernementale chargée de la santé publique est habilitée de décider de la possibilité d’utilisation des eaux de source ou de puits pour la consommation humaine.
Les matériaux utilisés dans cette action sont, sauf exception, les matériaux traditionnels. Les travaux de restauration ou d’entretien des réseaux d’eau de sources doivent être impérativement supervisés par un Ma’alem compétent. b. Le réseau traditionnel des oueds et le réseau d’assainissement Le réseau traditionnel des oueds propres dérivés de l’oued Fès doit faire l’objet d’une restauration en même temps que se développera le réseau séparatif d’eaux usées et ce selon les solutions préconisées par le Schéma Directeur d’Assainissement de la Wilaya de Fès . Aucune construction existante ou nouvelle ne peut réaliser un branchement nouveau de rejet des eaux usées sur ce réseau d’oueds propres et les branchements existants doivent disparaître dès que le réseau séparatif d’eaux usées est à même de desservir les constructions concernées. Tout rejet d’ordures ménagères, de déchets artisanaux ou tous autres déchets dans le réseau d’eau traditionnel est interdit. Après rénovation dudit réseau, les propriétaires dont les terrains sont traversés par une section de ce réseau sont responsables de son entretien normal au droit de leur propriété et sont tenus de signaler tout incident au gestionnaire dudit réseau. Le principe général est de séparer le réseau d’assainissement du réseau des oueds propres qui sera utilisé comme eau propre.
L’écoulement des eaux superficielles doit être séparé des murs limitant la voirie d’une distance minimale de 0,60m. Pour les voies inférieures à 1,20 , le caniveau sera situé dans l’axe de la voie. c. Le réseau d’eau potable de la Régie L’adduction de l’eau potable ne peut porter préjudice aux bâtisses historiques et aux V.R.D. de caractère historique. d. Réseaux d’électricité, de téléphone et éclairage public
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Les consoles ou poteaux support d’alimentation électrique, ou de distribution téléphonique sont interdits sur l’ensemble de la médina. Exceptionnellement, l’implantation des poteaux téléphoniques ne sera admise que dans les zones ou l’utilisation de la façade n’est pas permise. La pose des câbles sur autres supports les maintenant écartés de la façade est interdite. La traversée des rues par les câbles aériens est interdite. Les réseaux d’alimentation électriques dans les voies doivent être exécutés en réseaux souterrains ou par les câbles torsadés fixés sur les façades et adaptés à leurs volumes et saillies. Les câbles torsadés ne peuvent être installés sur les façades des monuments classés que dans le cas d’une nécessité extrême. Eclairage public: Selon leurs importances, les rues , artères principales et grandes portes urbaines seront dotées de luminaires adaptés à l’environnement spécifique concerné. Postes transformateurs et boîtes de distribution de lignes téléphoniques : Les postes transformateurs ne peuvent être implantés que dans les endroits prévus à cet effet. Dans l’impossibilité extrême de les construire en souterrain, les postes transformateurs peuvent être construits en surface à condition que leur édification ne porte aucun préjudice ni aux bâtisses avoisinantes ni à l’aspect urbain du site. L’emplacement des boîtes de distribution de lignes téléphoniques doit se faire dans des conditions similaires à l’implantation des postes transformateurs. Ces boîtes seront protégées dans des locaux fermés. Le réaménagement des réseaux téléphoniques de la Médina dans le but de supprimer les lignes qui traversent les terrasses avec la mise en place de sous répartiteurs pour lesquels il faut prévoir un emplacement adéquat en vue de répondre au présent règlement.
ARTICLE 13. SERVITUDE SPECIALE LE LONG DU MUR D’ENCEINTE DE LA MEDINA Quelle que soient la zone ou le secteur dans lesquels elles se trouvent, les constructions adossées au mur d’enceinte et celles qui, n’y étant pas adossées, longent celui ci et en dépassent l’altitude, sont interdites de surélévation et sont tenues de mettre les ouvertures de leur façade côté mur en conformité avec les dispositions qui leur seront indiquées par l’instance chargée de la sauvegarde de la Médina. Aucun percement nouveau dans cette façade n’est autorisé. Toute modification demandée à l’état de ces constructions peut être subordonnée à l’abaissement de leur hauteur au niveau du mur d’enceinte ou à la fermeture d’ouvertures au dessus de ce niveau défini ou celui du mur reconstitué, dans le cas où celui ci serait effondré. Une servitude non aedificandi est en outre imposée à tout terrain nu adossé au mur d’enceinte et ce sur une profondeur de 5 mètres.
2. TITRE II : DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES AUX ZONES URBAINES
Les zones urbaines de la Médina de Fès sont strictement limitées aux zones déjà construites, sauf cas exceptionnel extensions périphériques marginales justifiées.
L'objectif étant la réduction de la population de la Médina, le développement des équipements publics et collectifs vise à améliorer les conditions de vie de ses résidents et l'intérêt de celle ci pour le reste de la population de Fès ainsi que pour les visiteurs nationaux et étrangers, dans le strict respect du patrimoine historique et des fonctions culturelles et cultuelles de la Médina.
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CHAPITRE I : DISPOSITIONS GENERALES APPLICABLES AUX ZONES M (M1, M2 et M3)
ARTICLE 14. DEFINITION DES ZONES M Les zones M contiennent l'ensemble de la Médina ancienne et néo traditionnelle comprise à l'intérieur du mur d'enceinte. Les zones M sont Ml, M2 et M3 qui se différencient par leurs typologies respectives et les restrictions correspondantes en matière d'occupation ou d'utilisation du sol. La référence imposée en matière de conception architecturale est celle de la "construction traditionnelle", construite autour d'un patio intérieur et s'éclairant sur celui ci. Toute éventuelle reconstruction devra s'y conformer et le retour à cette référence pourra être exigé à l'occasion de toute opération de réhabilitation individuelle touchant à la structure d'une construction existante.
ARTICLE 15. UTILISATION GENERALE DU SOL ET DES CONSTRUCTIONS La Municipalité peut mettre le (ou les) propriétaire(s) en demeure de consolider, restaurer, réhabiliter ou reconstruire selon les cas toute construction menaçant ruine et, à défaut d'exécution et passé un délai d'un an, la Municipalité ou un organisme agissant par son mandat peuvent en requérir l'expropriation à des fins d'utilité collective en conformité avec le plan d'aménagement.
ARTICLE 16. HAUTEUR MAXIMALE DES CONSTRUCTIONS Les édifices religieux et culturels feront l'objet de dérogations, tant pour la forme de la toiture que pour la hauteur. Les projets de l'espèce seront soumis à l'appréciation de l'instance chargée de la sauvegarde de la Médina de Fès.
ARTICLE 17. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES SEPARATIVES OU MITOYENNES Dans les zones M (M1, M2 et M3), toute reconstruction ou adjonction à une construction existante peut être édifiée en mitoyenneté, surtout la périphérie de la parcelle, et sur toute la hauteur construite, sous réserve des droits de voisinage établis et des autres règles de construction.
ARTICLE 18. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX VOIES ET EMPRISES PUBLIQUES • Les constructions doivent être édifiées en respect de l’alignement. Les constructions ne doivent pas dégager de pignons en limite séparative, ni de reculs sur l’alignement, ceci afin d’améliorer les conditions d’éclairement, de renforcer la perception d’un rythme de façade, et de mise en valeur d’éléments architectoniques.
ARTICLE 19. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR UNE MEME PROPRIETE Dans les zones M, outre les dispositions relatives aux possibilités maximales d'utilisation du sol spécifiées par rapport à chaque zone, (M1, M2 et M3), toute construction nouvelle ou adjonction à une construction doit réserver un ou plusieurs patios de forme rectangulaire ou carrée d’une superficie au moins égale à 25 % de la superficie de la parcelle hors les surfaces des gaines, des puits d'éclairage et d'aération ou tout autre vide. La hauteur des façades donnant sur patio, est déterminées par les dispositions relatives à chacune des zones M1, M2 et M3. Pour les parcelles dont la superficie est supérieur ou égale à 100 m2, la largeur du patio doit être supérieure ou égale à 5m. Pour les parcelles dont la superficie est inférieure à 100 m2, la largeur du patio doit être supérieure ou égale à 3m. La couverture du patio à la terrasse par toute structure légère, provisoire et translucide est autorisée à condition que cette couverture soit séparée de la construction qu'elle surplombe par un espace libre d'au moins 0,50 mètre ( sur tout le contour du patio), assurant une ventilation naturelle du patio.
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ARTICLE 20. TRAITEMENT DES FACADES La nature des matériaux mis en oeuvre et les teintes de parements des façades doivent contribuer au maintien ou à la reconstitution de l'aspect originel de la Médina.
ARTICLE 21. ACCES ET STATIONNEMENT DES VEHICULES MOTORISES Dans la zone M1, en dehors des voies ouvertes normalement à la circulation, l'accès de véhicules motorisés est strictement interdit. Dans les zones M2 et M3 l'accès de véhicules motorisés est autorisé là où l'emprise des voies est supérieure ou égale à 5 mètres. Le long de ces voies, l'autorisation d'aménager un garage (dont l'accès facile doit âtre assuré) pour véhicule motorisé est soumise au respect du caractère général de la voie et notamment subordonnée à l'existence ou à la réalisation d'un volume abritant et cachant le véhicule à la vue extérieure ainsi qu'à la réalisation d'une porte pleine en bois dans le style des portes anciennes.
La création de parcs de stationnement collectifs privés, le long de ces mêmes sections de voies, est autorisée, sous réserve de l'application des règles de hauteur et des règles de sécurité en vigueur pour ce type d'installation.
La construction ou la reconstruction d'édifices d'intérêt général à l'exclusion des édifices religieux sur des parcelles accessibles par la voirie carrossable et de plus de 500 m2 est tenue, sauf impossibilité technique, d'inclure au moins un niveau de stationnement souterrain sous toute la superficie de la parcelle.
CHAPITRE II: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE M1 ZONE DE RESTAURATION ET DE CONSERVATION URBAINE.
ARTICLE 22. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE : La zone de restauration et de conservation urbaine représente le tissu urbain caractérisé par une organisation urbaine originelle, un niveau d’équipements traditionnels important et une originalité quant à la valeur architecturale des bâtisses . A savoir, la richesse du décor et la typologie architecturale. Dans les limites de la zone de restauration et de conservation urbaine, l’action ponctuelle prépondérante est celle de la restauration totale ou partielle vue la nature de la zone. Ceci n’exclut pas les autres types d’action qui s’imposent, à savoir, la réhabilitation, et la rénovation dans des cas exceptionnels. Délimitation de la zone : La zone de restauration et de conservation urbaine est délimitée sur le document graphique du plan d’aménagement. Elle comporte deux parties : l’une à Fès El Bali et l’autre à Fès Jdid.
ARTICLE 23. TYPES D’OCCUPATION OU D’UTILISATION INTERDITS Dans la zone M1 outre les occupations et activités énumérées à l'Article 7, sont interdits: •tous commerces de nature à porter atteinte au caractère traditionnel de la zone par le volume ou la nature des produits vendus ou par le bruit associé à la vente, •toute activité de service (moderne) nécessitant ou s'accompagnant d'une transformation des lieux incompatible avec le respect du tissu ancien, •toute activité polluante (effluents, bruits, odeurs); •toute activité ou occupation exigeant un accès motorisé immédiat fréquent sauf à proximité des accès, •tout dépôt de matière inflammable, en dehors des "pôles de rupture de charge" désignés par le Plan d'Aménagement, sauf dérogation justifiée pour l'entreposage vente de produits finis artisanaux.
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ARTICLE 24. LOTISSEMENT Dans la zone M1, aucun lotissement n'est autorisé.
ARTICLE 25. CONSERVATION DE LA TRAME VIAIRE La rue élément de définition urbain par excellence est à conserver avec toutes ses composantes : la voie et les deux parois formées par les façades des bâtisses ainsi que les sabats (encorbellements). Le gabarit de la voie ne peut donc faire l’objet de transformation. En particulier : •L’aspect, la forme de la voie, la largeur des rues, des places et des placettes sont à conserver, les impasses ne peuvent être transformées en rues passantes sauf pour celles prévues par le plan d’aménagement ou les plans sectoriels. •La disposition des portes et des ouvertures ne peut être changée. Dans le sens de la conservation de la rue, les exceptions qui pourraient avoir lieu sont attachées aux actions d’urgence ou aux conditions particulières d’intervention dans des actions ponctuelles. La pavage doit être réalisé avec de la pierre de ou les galets. Ce pavage doit permettre des interventions aisées quant aux réparations éventuelles des réseaux souterrains. Cependant toute bâtisse objet d’une action ponctuelle définie par le plan sectoriel doit retrouver son gabarit extérieur originel.
ARTICLE 26. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL 26.1. Dans la zone M1, le coefficient d’occupation du sol, l’emprise au sol ainsi que la hauteur des constructions à restaurer ou à conserver sont déterminés par référence à leur état originel et par leur typologie et ses variations possibles. Aucune construction privée nouvelle sur un terrain non bâti n’est autorisée à l’exception des ruines. En cas ou le terrain objet de projet porte encore les traces d’une ancienne construction, une autorisation de reconstruction / rénovation peut être délivrée sous condition de maintenir, la distribution architecturale, le volume et le nombre de niveaux antécédents. En cas d’impossibilité d’identifier ces derniers, la hauteur de la construction ne pourra dépasser la hauteur moyenne des bâtiments riverains de même nature sur un rayon de 50 m (pris au centre de la parcelle). Cependant la hauteur de la construction ne pourra dépasser 14 m ( comprenant le soubassement, les hauteur sous plafonds, les épaisseurs des dalles et le mur d’acrotère d'une hauteur de 1,70 m), le nombre de niveaux ne pourra dépasser trois niveaux( deux niveaux sur Rez de Chaussée et la hauteur sous plafond ne pourra être inférieure à 3.5 m exception faite pour les pièces non habitables dont la hauteur sous plafonds ne devra être inférieure à 2.20m (par référence aux demi niveaux).
26.2. Les aspects suivants sont à conserver : •Les relations de mitoyenneté et de voisinage concrétisées par des éléments physiques. •Le type des ouvertures et des portes et leur emplacement. • Les encorbellements avec leurs éléments structurels. •Les matériaux traditionnels utilisés ou similaires, que ce soit au niveau des structures porteuses apparentes ou au niveau de l’enduit et du revêtement.
Quand il s’agit d’une construction nouvelle ou une rénovation, des possibilités maximales d’utilisation de sol sont précisées ci dessus dans le présent règlement.
ARTICLE 27. OUVERTURES ET PERCEMENTS DE FACADES SUR VOIE ET SUR EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Dans la zone M1, les règles suivantes sont à respecter quant aux ouvertures et percements de façade sur emprises publiques:
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•aucune modification aux ouvertures et percements de façades sur voie ou emprise publique n'est admise. • Le percement de nouvelles ouvertures dans les constructions est interdit sauf exception. • toutefois, le percement de nouvelles ouvertures justifié par les nécessités d'éclairage et d'aération dues aux travaux de réaménagement et de réhabilitation ne peut être autorisé qu'exceptionnellement sous les conditions suivantes: ne pas porter préjudice de quelque nature que ce soit aux règles et moeurs du bon voisinage ne pas nuire à la composition et l’ordonnancement architectural ainsi qu’à l’harmonie de la composition urbaine. se conformer aux dimensions de H=2xL, H ne pouvant dépasser 0.4 m, la hauteur d'appui ne peut être inférieur à 1.7m
•Les fenêtres anciennes restaurées ou remplacées doivent être semblables à celles d’origine et s’intégrer avec l’ensemble des éléments de façades et des constructions voisines. •En cas d'autorisation de démolition et de reconstruction, la façade sur voie ou emprise publique doit être reconstituée à l'identique. •En cas où une autorisation de reconstruction est délivrée sans possibilité de recours aux traces de l'état originel des ouvertures de la façade, la surface totale des ouvertures ne peut dépasser 7% de la surface de la façade, les dimensions et hauteur d'appui ci haut cités sont à respecter. •L'Autorité pourra exiger, le cas échéant, à l'occasion de travaux de confortement ou de reconstruction, la réduction ou la modification d'ouverture ou de percements de façade exécutés ou modifiés contrairement aux éléments de façade originels de la Médina et dont l'importance, la forme ou l'aspect sont de nature à porter atteinte à l'homogénéité des lieux.
ARTICLE 28. ASPECT EXTERIEUR : 28.1.Règle générale : Dans la zone M1, tout ce qui participe à l’aménagement de l’espace : les sols, le mobilier urbain, les constructions, l’éclairage public et privé,... etc., doit s’intégrer à l’environnement urbain spécifique. 28.2.Servitude d’architecture concernant les constructions existantes : •Tous les éléments de qualité architecturale, artistique ou urbanistique feront l’objet de classement ou d’inscription sur la liste de patrimoine national avec les conséquences qui s’imposent au niveau de leur conservation. •Les façades à restaurer devront être débarrassées des éléments parasites, tels que bandeaux, balcons rajoutés, enduits ciments, tuyauterie sanitaire, panneaux de signalisation ou de publicité. •Les descentes d’eau apparentes sur façade sont interdites. •Les bâtiments doivent être restaurés par leur matériaux de mise en oeuvre d’origine ou des matériaux similaires.
28.3 Traitement de maçonnerie : •Lors du ravalement de la façade, toute partie de construction et tout détail d’architecture doit être conservé et mis en valeur. •Les parements des façades doivent être en matériaux traditionnels( brique cuite, pierre , enduit de chaux et sable) ou des matériaux similaires . •Dans le cas de matériaux détériorés, il sera procédé à leur remplacement, par les matériaux originels. •Les motifs sur enduit sont permis après accord de la commission de voirie. •La réfection des joints de la maçonnerie en pierre ou de briques cuites traditionnelles doit être effectuée avec un mortier de couleur voisine des matériaux de construction utilisés. •Les façades doivent être traitées en enduit de chaux et sable ou un enduit équivalent. •Si lors du décapage d’une façade, des détails architecturaux d’époque ancienne sont découverts, ils doivent être conservés et mis en valeur.
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28.4 Encorbellements et sabats : Tout encorbellement ou sabat est à conserver. 28.5 Toitures et terrasses accessibles : Tout projet de modification ou de réfection de toiture ou de terrasse devra permettre l’accessibilité des terrasses sans nuisance au voisinage.
CHAPITRE III: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE M2, ZONE DE REHABILITATION URBAINE
ARTICLE 29. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE La zone de réhabilitation urbaine, dite zone M2, est formée par un tissu dont les bâtisses ont une valeur architecturale du type néo traditionnel. Les conditions de formation et d’évolution de ce tissu, ne lui ont pas permis d’aboutir à un aspect urbain achevé et cohérent tel qu’on le trouve dans la zone M1. En effet, le niveau d’équipement dans cette zone n’est pas satisfaisant, ainsi que la structure urbaine composée de réseaux viaires hiérarchisés et de centres de quartiers n’a pas pu se former au cours de l’extension de ce tissu urbain.
ARTICLE 30. TYPES D'OCCUPATlON OU D'UTILISATION INTERDITS Dans la zone M2 outre les occupations et activités énumérées à l'Article 7 , sont interdits:
• Toute activité polluante (effluents, bruits, odeurs); • Tout dépôt, atelier ou entrepôt de plus de 200 m2.
ARTICLE 31. LOTISSEMENT Dans la zone M2, les lotissements ne sont autorisés qu'exceptionnellement sous les conditions suivantes: •sont exclus de l'objet du lotissement les jardins, Riads, Jnans et bâtisses dont les structures ou leurs traces sont encore identifiables. •le terrain objet du lotissement/morcellement ne présente aucun intérêt paysager, •la non occupation dudit terrain engendre des problèmes pour son environnement immédiat, •le lotissement ne pourra en aucun cas donner lieu à des parcelles inférieures à 300m2.
ARTICLE 32. DELIMITATION DE LA ZONE La zone de réhabilitation urbaine est définie comme il est précisé sur le document graphique du plan d’aménagement est formé de 2 sous zones en ce qui concerne la commune urbaine Fès Médina ( Fès El Bali): 1 : Batha,Douh, Ziat, Bab Jdid, 2 : Hbiyel, Sidi Boujida, Blida, Zenjfour,Bab Guissa, Derb Ameur / Foudouk Lihoudi.
ARTICLE 33. VOIRIE Dans cette zone, la rue peut être objet de transformation : Elargissement de la voie, création de place, placette, parking,... etc. Les deux parois de la rue (façades) ne sont pas forcement à conserver. Elles peuvent subir des transformations émanant des actions ponctuelles de réhabi, de création d’ouvertures et de portes. Le pavage des voies peut être réalisé avec de la pierre ou des galets dans les rues et impasses.
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ARTICLE 34. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL ET HAUTEUR DE CONSTRUCTION Dans la zone M2, le coefficient d’occupation du sol, l’emprise au sol ainsi que la hauteur des constructions à restaurer ou à réhabiliter sont déterminés par référence à leur état originel et par leur typologie et ses variations possibles. En cas ou le terrain objet de projet porte encore les traces d’une ancienne construction, une autorisation de reconstruction / rénovation peut être délivrée sous condition de maintenir, la distribution architecturale, le volume et le nombre de niveaux antécédents. En cas d’impossibilité d’identifier ces derniers, la hauteur de la construction ne pourra dépasser la hauteur moyenne des bâtiments riverains de même nature sur un rayon de 50 m (pris au centre de la parcelle). Cependant la hauteur de la construction ne pourra dépasser 13 m ( comprenant le soubassement, les hauteur sous plafonds, les épaisseurs des dalles et le mur d’acrotère d'une hauteur de 1,70 m), le nombre de niveaux ne pourra dépasser trois niveaux( deux niveaux sur rez de chaussée et la hauteur sous plafond ne pourra être inférieure à 3.2 m exception faite pour les pièces non habitables dont la hauteur sous plafonds ne devra être inférieure à 2.20m (par référence aux demi niveaux).
ARTICLE 35. OUVERTURES ET PERCEMENTS DE FACADES SUR VOIE ET SUR EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Dans la zone M2, les règles suivantes sont à respecter quant aux ouvertures et percements de façade sur emprises publiques: • Le percement de nouvelles ouvertures dans les constructions est autorisé par nécessité d'éclairage et d'aération dues aux travaux de réaménagement et de réhabilitation sous les conditions suivantes: ne pas porter préjudice de quelque nature que ce soit aux règles et moeurs du bon voisinages ne pas nuire à la composition et l’ordonnancement architectural ainsi qu’à l’harmonie de la composition urbaine. se conformer aux dimensions de H=2xL, H ne pouvant dépasser 0.8 m, la hauteur d'appui ne peut être inférieur à 1.7 m •Les fenêtres anciennes restaurées ou remplacées doivent être semblables à celles d’origine et s’intégrer avec l’ensemble des éléments de façades et des constructions voisines. •En cas où une autorisation de reconstruction est délivrée, la surface totale des ouvertures ne peut dépasser 15% de la surface de la façade, les dimensions et hauteur d'appui ci haut cités sont à respecter. •L'Autorité pourra exiger, le cas échéant, à l'occasion de travaux de confortement ou de reconstruction, la réduction ou la modification d'ouverture ou de percements de façade exécutés ou modifiés contrairement aux éléments de façade spécifiques à la zone M2 et dont l'importance, la forme ou l'aspect sont de nature à porter atteinte à l'homogénéité des lieux.
ARTICLE 36. ASPECT EXTERIEUR 36.1. Règle générale : Dans la zone M2, tout ce qui participe à l’aménagement de l’espace ; les sols, le mobilier urbain, les constructions, l’éclairage public et privé,... etc., doit s’intégrer au site urbain. 36.2. Servitudes d’architecture concernant les constructions existantes : Traitement des façades : •Tous les éléments de qualité architecturale, artistique ou urbanistique seront classés ou inscrit sur la liste du patrimoine national. •Les façades devront être débarrassées des éléments parasites, tels que bandeaux, balcons rajoutés, auvents des portes et fenêtres non intégrés à l’environnement urbain. Les enduits : •Les motifs d’imitation en enduit se rapportant aux motifs existants dans la médina sont permis après accord de la commission de voirie.
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•L’enduit pourrait être appliqué avec chaux et sable ou ciment selon la nature des matériaux de la bâtisse. Dans les deux cas, la couleur jaune ocre doit être recherchée.
CHAPITRE IV: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE M3, ZONE DE RENOVATION URBAINE
ARTICLE 37. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE La zone de rénovation urbaine est caractérisée par un tissu urbain qui ne s’est pas formé et développé dans des conditions normales d’urbanisation. Elle est constituée d’un bâti en grande partie dégradé et sans valeur architecturale particulière. Les bâtisses ayant une valeur considérable sont en général des équipements à préserver et à restaurer. Cette zone est constituée de deux sous zones à la commune urbaine de Fès Médina: Kasbat Filala ( connue aussi par le nom de kasbat Nouar) et Kasbat Boujloud et de deux autres sous zones à la commune urbaine Méchouar Fès El Jadid : Fès Jdid Bab Jiaf (Nouaouel Lkbar) et Moulay Abdellah.
ARTICLE 38. TYPES D'OCCUPATlON OU D'UTILISATION INTERDITS Dans la zone M3 outre les occupations et activités énumérées à l'Article 7, sont interdits: •Toute activité polluante (effluents, bruits, odeurs); •Tout dépôt, atelier ou entrepôt de plus de 200 m2.
ARTICLE 39. LOTISSEMENT Dans la zone M3, les lotissements ne sont autorisés qu'exceptionnellement sous les conditions suivantes: •sont exclus de l'objet du lotissement les jardins, Riads, Jnans et bâtisses dont les structures ou leurs traces sont encore identifiables. •le terrain objet du lotissement ne présente aucun intérêt paysager, •la non occupation dudit terrain engendre des problèmes pour son environnement immédiat, •le lotissement ne pourra en aucun cas donner lieu à des parcelles inférieures à 100m2.
ARTICLE 40. VOIRIE 40.1. Conservation de la trame viaire : La structure de la trame viaire actuelle est à conserver. Ceci n’exclut pas l’élargissement et l’ouverture de certaines voies ou impasses. 40.2. Pavage des voies : Le pavage sera exécuté en pierre, ou par un matériau similaire. Les trottoirs ne sont autorisés que, dans le cas où la différence de niveau est importante entre les deux rives de la voie. 40.3. Ecoulement des eaux pluviales : L’écoulement des eaux pluviales ou des eaux de ruissellement devra être séparé des murs d’alignement d’un minimum de 0,60m. Dans le cas ou les rues sont inférieures à 1,20m, le caniveau est situé dans l’axe de la voie.
ARTICLE 41. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL ET HAUTEUR DES CONSTRUCTIONS Dans la zone M3, le coefficient d’occupation du sol, l’emprise au sol ainsi que la hauteur des constructions ayant une valeur et qui sont à restaurer ou à réhabiliter sont déterminés par référence à leur état originel et par leur typologie et ses variations possibles. Les constructions n'ayant pas de valeur ou ayant été remarquablement transformées (celles ci constituent une importante proportion dans la zone M3), une autorisation de reconstruction / rénovation peut être délivrée. La hauteur de la construction est limitée à 9 m (comprenant le mur
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d’acrotère de 1.7 m), le nombre de niveaux ne pourra dépasser deux niveaux (un étage sur rez de chaussée et la hauteur sous plafond ne pourra être inférieure à 3.0 m.
ARTICLE 42. OUVERTURES ET PERCEMENTS DE FACADES SUR VOIE ET SUR EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Dans la zone M3, les règles suivantes sont à respecter quant aux ouvertures et percements de façade sur emprises publiques: •Le percement de nouvelles ouvertures dans les constructions est autorisé par nécessité d'éclairage et d'aération dues aux travaux de réaménagement et de réhabilitation sous les conditions suivantes: ne pas porter préjudice de quelque nature que ce soit aux règles et moeurs du bon voisinage ne pas nuire à la composition et l’ordonnancement architectural ainsi qu’à l’harmonie de la composition urbaine. se conformer aux dimensions de H=2xL, H ne pouvant dépasser 0.8 m, la hauteur d'appui ne peut être inférieur à 1.7m •Les fenêtres anciennes restaurées ou remplacées doivent être semblables à celles d’origine et s’intégrer avec l’ensemble des éléments de façades et des constructions voisines. •En cas où une autorisation de reconstruction est délivrée, la surface totale des ouvertures ne peut dépasser 10 % de la surface de la façade, les dimensions et hauteur d'appui ci haut citées sont à respecter.
ARTICLE 43. SERVITUDE D’ARCHITECTURE : 43.1. Toitures : Seules les toitures terrasses accessibles sont exigés à l’exclusion des bâtiments administratifs, cultuels ou culturels qui pourront comporter partiellement des toitures accessibles. Les toitures en pente sont autorisées partiellement pour les demeures de grandes surfaces. Les terrasses étant généralement accessibles la hauteur de l’acrotère est de 1,70m. Dans le cas d’une possibilité de vue panoramique ne représentant pas de nuisance pour les voisins, la hauteur de l’acrotère pourrait être de 1,20m. 43.2. Aspect architectural des façades : Tous les éléments d’ordonnancement architectural extérieur doivent être intégrés à l’architecture locale.
CHAPITRE V: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE IM
ARTICLE 44. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE La zone IM est caractérisée par le proximité du réseau de grande voirie, la faible ancienneté, le moindre intérêt architectural des constructions et la présence de nombreuses activités d’entreposage et de redistribution, de production ou de transformation traditionnelles et modernes, dont certaines polluantes ou très gênantes pour le voisinage. La zone IM, telle que délimitée au Plan, s’étend aux abords des portes Bab Ftouh / Bab Khokha. L’objectif est de conforter le rôle économique et d’améliorer le fonctionnement des différentes parties de cette zone, de favoriser leur modernisation tout en excluant les activités excessivement polluantes ou absolument incompatibles avec la vie résidentielle et en respectant le voisinage de la médina historique et la protection du site, en particulier des remparts. L’intervention publique relève de l’amélioration continue des infrastructures d’accès ou de desserte et des équipements, spécialement des équipements de services aux activités économiques.
ARTICLE 45. UTILISATION GENERALE DU SOL ET DES CONSTRUCTIONS Dans la zone IM, les locaux peuvent indifféremment recevoir une affectation à usage d’habitation dans les étages et à usage d’activités commerciales dans le rez de chaussée ou d’artisanat manuel non polluant et n ’ exigeant pas un matériel ou un équipement lourd .
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En cas d’usage d’un même immeuble pour l’habitation aux étages et pour des activités au rez de chaussée, l’accès aux habitations devra être indépendant de l’accès aux ateliers ou entrepôts. La démolition partielle ou totale d’immeubles existants n’ayant pas de valeur, en vue de les aménager ou de les remplacer par des constructions adaptées à l’activité économique du propriétaire ou de l’acquéreur, est en principe autorisée. L’autorisation de démolition devra être obtenue avant tout commencement de démolition et l’instance en charge de la sauvegarde la Médina pourra exiger la conservation de parties d’immeuble en raison de leur caractère ou de leur contribution au caractère de la voie les desservant.
ARTICLE 46. TYPES D’OCCUPATION INTERDITS Sont interdits dans la zone IM, outre les installations et activités stipulées à l'Article 7 du TITRE 1 : •Les activités polluantes par leurs déchets solides ou liquides non traitables avant rejet dans le domaine ou les réseaux publics, ainsi que celles induisant un trafic motorisé supérieur à 3 tonnes par jour par portion de 100 m2 de plancher hors oeuvre . •Les ateliers, dépôts et entrepôts de plus de 500 m2 d’un seul tenant, sur un ou plusieurs niveaux.
ARTICLE 47. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTlLlSATION DU SOL Pour la zone IM, il n’est fixé ni coefficient d’occupation du sol, ni emprise maximale au sol, ni minimum de surface parcellaire. Est toutefois interdit le lotissement de parcelle qui donnerait naissance à des parcelles nouvelles de superficie inférieure à 200 m2 ou de moins de 10 mètres de façade sur voie d’accès. Les possibilités d’utilisation du sol sont limitées par l’application des règles de prospect ci après définis.
ARTICLE 48. HAUTEUR MAXIMALE DES CONSTRUCTIONS Toute construction, à l’exception des édifices religieux et culturels, doit se terminer par un toit en terrasse accessible. Les constructions ne peuvent dépasser, acrotère compris, 11,50 mètres, mesurés à partir du nivellement de la voie bordant la parcelle, et 2 niveaux sur rez de chaussée. Une construction nouvelle ne pourra cependant avoir, par rapport au niveau de la voie qui la dessert, une hauteur supérieure à la hauteur moyenne des constructions existant sur les parcelles du même alignement de voie dans les 50 mètres de part et d’autre. Si une parcelle est desservie par deux voies, la présente règle de hauteur s’appliquera sur chaque voie et pour la moitié de parcelle entre les deux voies. Les édifices religieux et culturels feront l’objet de dérogations, tant pour la forme de la toiture que pour la hauteur. Les projets de l’espèce seront soumis à l’avis de l’instance en charge de la sauvegarde de la Médina de Fès.
ARTICLE 49. IMPLANTATION ET HAUTEUR DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX VOIES ET EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Toute construction nouvelle doit être implantée à l’alignement sur au moins les trois quarts de la façade sur voie. Le quart restant devra être délimité, le cas échéant, par un mur de 3 mètres de haut sur l’alignement. En cas de démolition et reconstruction, la hauteur sur voie de la nouvelle construction sera identique de mitoyen à mitoyen, à celle de la construction démolie et sur une profondeur de 5 mètres au moins par rapport à la voie.
ARTICLE 50. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES SEPARATIVES OU MITOYENNES La reconstruction à l’identique d’un immeuble détruit autorise le maintien des mitoyennetés existant avant démolition. Une construction nouvelle, totale ou partielle, qui ne constitue pas une reconstruction à l’identique ainsi que toute adjonction à une construction existante peuvent être édifiées en mitoyenneté :
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•En limites séparatives latérales (perpendiculaires à la voie de desserte), dans une bande de 15 mètres mesurée à partir de l’alignement de la rue. Au delà de cette bande, jusqu’à 6 mètres du fond de parcelle, les constructions doivent respecter un recul minimum de 4 mètres par rapport à la limite mitoyenne, quelle que soit leur hauteur ;
ARTICLE 51. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR UNE MEME PROPRIETE Les constructions implantées en vis à vis sur une même propriété seront séparées par une distance égale ou supérieure à la hauteur de la construction la plus élevée L ≥ H, avec un minimum de 3 m.
ARTICLE 52. OUVERTURES ET PERCEMENTS DE FACADES SUR VOIE ET SUR EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Sans préjudice des dispositions qui seraient exigées localement par l’instance en charge de la sauvegarde de la Médina au voisinage immédiat d’un bâtiment classé : •L’ouverture de portes et baies de devantures au rez de chaussée, dans des façades existantes ou nouvelle, est autorisée sans limite de dimension et aucune prescription de matériau n’est imposée. •Les ouvertures de baies aux étages, dans des façades sur voie conservées ou nouvelles, ne pourront dépasser 2 m2 par 10 m2 de façade (surface de façade de rez de chaussée déduite) ; la proportion de ces ouvertures sera de 1/1,5 (hauteur égale à 1,5 fois la largeur) ; les ouvertures seront doublées de volets extérieurs obligatoirement en bois.
ARTICLE 53. TRAITEMENT DES FACADES La nature des matériaux mis en oeuvre et les teintes de parements des façades doivent contribuer au maintien de l’aspect général de la Médina. Aucun matériau ni mode de construction n’est interdit, à condition que l’aspect fini extérieur ou un revêtement assurent la conformité de matière et de couleur avec les techniques et matériaux traditionnels. Toute apparence de structure porteuse, de poutre ou de linteaux en béton armé, est notamment proscrite.
ARTICLE 54. ACCES ET STATIONNEMENT DES VEHICULES MOTORISES L’accès de véhicules motorisés de tourisme et de camionnettes de livraison à l’intérieur des parcelles privées est strictement interdit en dehors des voies ouvertes normalement à la circulation et d’une emprise supérieure ou égale à 5 mètres. Le long de ces voies, l’autorisation d’aménager un garage ( dont l'accès facile doit être assuré) pour véhicules motorisés de tourisme ou camionnettes est subordonnée à l’existence ou à la réalisation d’un volume abritant et cachant le véhicule à la vue extérieure ainsi qu’à la réalisation d’une porte pleine. L’accès de véhicules de plus de 500 Kg de charge utile à l’intérieur des parcelles n’est autorisé que sur les voies normalement ouvertes à la circulation d’au moins 10 mètres d’emprise. Les mêmes dispositions qu’à l’alinéa précédent s’appliquaient à l’aménagement de garages pour ce type de véhicule. La création de parcs de stationnement collectifs privés le long de ces mêmes voies, est autorisée, sous réserve de l’application de ces règles de sécurité en vigueur pour ce type d’installation. Les dispositions du présent article ne peuvent être opposées à la réglementation de la circulation que les autorités ont mises ou mettraient en place.
CHAPITRE VI: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE E
ARTICLE 55. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE La zone E est une zone urbaine d ’ « habitat continu, individuel ou collectif». L’implantation à l’alignement sur voie est obligatoire et la construction sur limites parcellaires encouragée, pour créer un habitat sur cour patio, de caractère traditionnel.
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Cette zone comprend, dans les limites du Plan d’Aménagement de la Médina et de ses abords, un seul secteur E2, couvrant le lotissement de Bab Khokha et les quartiers de Douar Ben Chérif et Douar Bou Taa. Le rez de chaussée des bâtiments peut accueillir des commerces ou de l’artisanat, sous réserves des interdictions fixées à l’Article 56 ci après.
ARTICLE 56. TYPES D’OCCUPATION OU D’UTILISATION INTERDITS Sont interdits : Les établissements industriels de 1ère et 2ème catégories Les dépôts de plus de 120 m² L'extension limitée ou la modification des installations industrielles classées existantes, peut être autorisée, à condition qu'il n'en résulte pas pour le voisinage une aggravation du danger et des nuisances, que leur volume et leur aspect extérieur soient compatibles avec le milieu environnant, et ne modifient pas le caractère de la zone Les constructions à caractère provisoire, les campings et les caravanings L'ouverture et l'exploitation de carrières
ARTICLE 57. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL Le coefficient d'occupation du sol maximum pour la parcelle privative après morcellement ou lotissement (COS) est fixé à 2,2. La surface constructible au sol par rapport à la superficie de la parcelle privative (CES) ne peut dépasser 75 %. Le minimum parcellaire de la parcelle privative est fixé à 80 m² et 8 m de large.
ARTICLE 58. HAUTEUR MAXIMALE DES CONSTRUCTIONS Les constructions, acrotère compris, ne peuvent dépasser les hauteurs et le nombre de niveaux suivants : 11 m (R+2) Au dessus de ces hauteurs, sont autorisés les parapets de terrasses accessibles dont la hauteur maximale est de 1,20 m, et les cages d'escaliers d'une hauteur maximale de 2,50 m.
ARTICLE 59. IMPLANTATION ET HAUTEUR DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX VOIES ET EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Sauf volonté exprimée au plan d'aménagement, toute construction nouvelle doit être implantées à l'alignement sur voie, sur au moins les 2/3 de la largeur de la parcelle. Toutefois, une marge de recul sur voie de 3 m de largeur peut être prévue sur toute la largeur de la parcelle sous réserve que la surface minimale de celle ci soit de 100 m².
ARTICLE 60. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES OU MITOYENNES Les constructions peuvent être implantées en limites séparatives. La cour aura une superficie minimale de 20 m², et une largeur minimale de 4 m.
ARTICLE 61. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR UNE MEME PROPRIETE Les constructions implantées en vis à vis sur une même propriété, seront séparées par une distance égale ou supérieure à la hauteur de la construction la plus élevée L ≥ H, avec un minimum de 3 m.
ARTICLE 62. ACCES ET STATIONNEMENT DES VEHICULES MOTORISES Le stationnement des véhicules, qui doit être assuré en dehors des chaussées réservées à la circulation, doit être prévu soit sur la parcelle privative, soit dans le cadre du lotissement.
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Sont à prévoir : Une place de stationnement pour 300 m² de surface hors oeuvre de logement. Une place pour 100 m² de surface hors oeuvre d'activité commerciale ou artisanale. N.B. : Dimensions minimales des places de stationnement : En surface: 2.30 m x 5.00 m En sous sol ou en élévation: 2.50 m x 5.00 m
ARTICLE 63. PLANTATIONS Une partie de la superficie des lotissements sera réservée pour des aménagements publics divers : mails, jeux, jardins... Ces réservations représenteront 7 % de la superficie du lotissement après déduction des surfaces prévues pour les équipements publics et le stationnement des véhicules. Les aires de stationnement seront plantées à raison d'un arbre haute tige pour deux places.
CHAPITRE VII: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE DE RESTRUCTURATION URBAINE (S 10 B)
ARTICLE 64. DEFINITION DU SECTEUR La zone S 10 B recouvre la partie du quartier Jnane Chami et des abords de Bab El Khokha qui assure la principale jonction entre Fès El Bali et les quartiers des Jnanates. Cette zone a été construite dans de très mauvaises conditions et de façon extrêmement dense. Cette densité et la valeur foncière de cette localisation dans la ville sont telles qu’une rénovation publique est difficile à programmer, mais qu’il y a possibilité d’envisager une rénovation spontanée progressive. Le classement en zone S 10 B ne portera effet qu’en cas de reconstruction, qu’il doit. Il peut néanmoins s’imposer Pour des aménagements de détail ou des adjonctions.
ARTICLE 65. UTILISATION GENERALE DU SOL ET DES CONSTRUCTIONS La Zone S 10 B est prévue pour recevoir l’habitat, les bureaux, le commerce, l’artisanat et les équipements administratifs ou hôteliers.
ARTICLE 66. TYPES D’OCCUPATION OU D’UTILISATION INTERDITS Outre les installations et activités stipulées à l’Article 7 du Titre I du présent Règlement, sont interdites les occupations ou utilisations du sol suivantes : •Toutes utilisations à usage industriel, quel qu’en soit le type ou la catégorie, •Les dépôts de plus de 200 m2
ARTICLE 67. VOIRIE Toute la trame viaire dans le secteur 10B est à réorganiser : •Réfection et aménagement de voies à maintenir, •Elargissement, •Création de nouvelles voies. •Aucune intervention sur la voirie ne pourra avoir lieu avant la réalisation ou la réfection des réseaux divers et notamment le réseau d’assainissement. •Les équipements : Il est impératif d’assurer les équipements et services nécessaires pour la zone : équipement socio éducatif, équipement culturel et cultuel, équipement sanitaire, Zone de protection des installations de traitement, services divers. •Embellissement de façade :
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L’embellissement et l’ordonnancement de façade sont imposés dans cette zone. Un cahier de charge spécifique est exigé à cet effet.
ARTICLE 68. AUTORISATIONS Aucune autorisation de lotir ou de construire ne sera délivrée avant l’élaboration et l’approbation d’un plan sectoriel de restructuration. L’autorisation ne sera délivrée que dans le sens de l’achèvement et de l’amélioration de la zone.
ARTICLE 69. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL Le coefficient d'occupation du sol maximum pour la parcelle privative après morcellement ou lotissement (COS) est fixé à 2,2. La surface constructible au sol par rapport à la superficie de la parcelle privative (CES) ne peut dépasser 75 %. Le minimum parcellaire de la parcelle privative est fixé à 80 m² et 8 m de large.
ARTICLE 70. HAUTEUR MAXIMALE DES CONSTRUCTIONS Les constructions, acrotère compris, ne peuvent dépasser les hauteurs et le nombre de niveaux suivants : 11 m (R+2) Au dessus de ces hauteurs, sont autorisés les parapets de terrasses accessibles dont la hauteur maximale est de 1,20 m, et les cages d'escaliers d'une hauteur maximale de 2,50 m.
ARTICLE 71. IMPLANTATION ET HAUTEUR DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX VOIES ET EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Sauf volonté exprimée au plan d'aménagement, toute construction nouvelle doit être implantées à l'alignement sur voie, sur au moins les 2/3 de la largeur de la parcelle. Toutefois, une marge de recul sur voie de 3 m de largeur peut être prévue sur toute la largeur de la parcelle sous réserve que la surface minimale de celle ci soit de 100 m².
ARTICLE 72. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES SEPARATIVES OU MITOYENNES Les constructions peuvent être implantées en limites séparatives. La cour aura une superficie minimale de 20 m², et une largeur minimale de 4 m.
ARTICLE 73. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR UNE MEME PROPRIETE Les constructions implantées en vis à vis sur une même propriété, seront séparées par une distance égale ou supérieure à la hauteur de la construction la plus élevée L ≥ H, avec un minimum de 3 m.
ARTICLE 74. ACCES ET STATIONNEMENT DES VEHICULES MOTORISES Le stationnement des véhicules, qui doit être assuré en dehors des chaussées réservées à la circulation, doit être prévu soit sur la parcelle privative, soit dans le cadre du lotissement. Sont à prévoir : Une place de stationnement pour 300 m² de surface hors oeuvre de logement. Une place pour 100 m² de surface hors oeuvre d'activité commerciale ou artisanale. N.B. : Dimensions minimales des places de stationnement : En surface: 2.30 m x 5.00 m En sous sol ou en élévation: 2.50 m x 5.00 m
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ARTICLE 75. PLANTATIONS Une partie de la superficie des lotissements sera réservée pour des aménagements publics divers : mails, jeux, jardins... Ces réservations représenteront 7 % de la superficie du lotissement après déduction des surfaces prévues pour les équipements publics et le stationnement des véhicules. Les aires de stationnement seront plantées à raison d'un arbre haute tige pour deux places.
CHAPITRE VIII: DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA ZONE DES GRANDS EQUIPEMENTS (AM)
ARTICLE 76. DEFINITION DE LA ZONE La zone AM, dite des grands équipements publics, telle que délimitée au plan d’aménagement, englobe les espaces entre les remparts originels de Fès El Bali à l’est (place Batha) et Fès Jdid à l’ouest , du Boulevard Allal El Fassi au sud à l’Avenue des Mérinides au nord. Cette zone est caractérisée par la présence quasi exclusive de palais (Baida, Batha), de grands équipements publics (hôpitaux, collèges ....), de parcs et jardins (Bab Boujloud) et par une voirie de normes « modernes », assurant en particulier une traversée automobile nord sud aisée de l’ensemble des deux médinas (avenue des Nations Unies). L’objectif global est de conforter les caractéristiques fonctionnelles et urbanistiques du tissu existant, la place prépondérante des plantations, la perméabilité aux déplacements motorisés, tout en autorisant l’implantation de quelques équipements publics ou d’intérêt général de haut niveau, en relation avec le rôle de la Médina dans l’ensemble urbain de Fès. Un objectif complémentaire à améliorer la liaison piétonnière entre les deux parties de la Médina (et plus largement d’est en ouest de l’agglomération fassie, de la rive andalous au centre de la ville Nouvelle), tant à travers le jardin Boujloud que de part et d’autre de celui ci. L’intervention publique n’a d’autres spécificité que l’élévation de la qualité des espaces et de l’architecture, ainsi que de la circulation.
ARTICLE 77. TYPES D’OCCUPATION OU D’UTILISATION INTERDITS Sont interdites dans la zone AM : •Toutes les activités de production et de transformation ; •Les dépôts et entrepôts de toute nature, en dehors de ceux requis par le bon fonctionnement des édifices et des équipements publics ; •Toute construction de locaux à usage d’habitation, à l’exception de logements de fonction exigés par le gardiennage ou le bon fonctionnement des équipements publics ou d’intérêt général.
ARTICLES 78. POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D’UTILISATION DU SOL Le coefficient d’occupation du sol est limité à 1. La surface constructible au sol est limitée à 33% de la surface parcellaire. La superficie minimale d’une parcelle pour être constructible est fixée à 500 m2. Cette restriction ne s’applique pas aux parcelles créées avant la mise en application du présent plan d’aménagement.
ARTICLES 79. HAUTEURS MAXIMALES DES CONSTRUCTIONS Les constructions peuvent se terminer par une toiture terrasse, accessible ou nom, ou par un toit traditionnel à quatre pans, revêtu de tuiles vertes, éventuellement par une coupole. La hauteur des constructions ne peut pas dépasser, à l’égout du toit, la hauteur totale de : 14,50 mètres et trois niveaux sur rez de chaussée (R +3). L’étage situé immédiatement au dessus du rez de chaussée est compté pour un étage normal et ne peut, en aucun cas, être considéré comme un « entresol » en plus de 3 niveaux au dessus du rez de chaussée fixés ci dessus.
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Au dessus de la hauteur de 14,50 sont autorisés, outre les toitures en pente et les coupoles, les sorties de cages d’escalier et les machineries d’ascenseurs d’une hauteur maximale de 2,50 mètres.
ARTICLE 80. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX EMPRISES PUBLIQUES Les constructions peuvent être édifiés, à l’alignement ou en retrait de 3 mètres au moins de l’alignement. Une construction ne peut dépasser en aucun point une hauteur égale à la distance qui la sépare de l’alignement opposé de la voie qui dessert le terrain. En face d’un débouché de voie, l’alignement manquant est remplacé par une ligne joignant les deux angles du domaine public formés par cette voie avec la voie qui dessert le terrain. A l’angle de deux voies de largeurs inégales, un « droit de retour » est accordé en fonction des règles de l’A.M.P.
ARTICLE 81. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES SEPARATIVES OU MITOYENNES Dans une bande de 20 mètres, mesurée à partir de l’alignement sur voie, les constructions peuvent être édifiées en mitoyenneté. Au delà de cette bande, les constructions ne peuvent pas être édifiées en mitoyenneté et la distance entre tout point d’une construction et limite séparative, latérale ou de fond de parcelle, doit être égale ou supérieure à la moitié de la hauteur de la construction en ce point, avec un minimum de 6 mètres.
ARTICLE 82. IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR UNE MEME PROPRIETE La distance séparant les façades en vis à vis de constructions édifiées sur une même propriété ne peut être inférieur aux deux tiers (2/3) de la hauteur du bâtiment le plus élevé, avec un minimum de 6 mètres.
ARTICLE 83. ACCES ET STATIONNEMENT DES VEHICULES MOTORISES Le stationnement des véhicules devra être à l’intérieur de la parcelle, en dehors des emprises publiques, en sous sol ou dans les cours et marges de reculs, à raison de : •Logements de fonctions : une place par logement. •Bureaux : une place pour 80 m2 de surface construite hors oeuvre. •Hôtels : une place pour quatre chambres et une place pour 20 m2 de salle de restauration.
ARTICLE 84. PLANTATIONS Les surfaces libres de constructions doivent être engazonnées, plantées d’arbustes et d’arbres de haute tige à raison d’un arbre au moins pour 100 m2 de surface libre et plantée. Les aires de stationnement à l’air libre seront plantées d’arbres de haute tige à raison d’un arbre au moins pour 2 places de stationnement.
CHAPITRE IV : DISPOSITION APPLICABLES A LA ZONE IN
ARTICLE 85 : DESTINATION DE LA ZONE La zone IN est destinée aux activités artisanales et commerciales, dans laquelle peuvent également trouver place le logement des artisans, à raison d'un logement au maximum par parcelle.
ARTICLE 86 : TYPES D'OCCUPATION OU D'UTILISATION INTERDITS L'ouverture et l'exploitation des carrières L'habitat à RDC
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ARTICLE 87 : POSSIBILITES MAXIMALES D'OCCUPATION DU SOL Le coefficient d'occupation du sol (COS) pour la parcelle privative est au maximum de 1,6. La surface maximale construite au sol (CES), par rapport à la surface de la parcelle privative n'est pas limitée dans la mesure où l'article relatif à l'implantation des constructions sur une même propriété soit respecté. Pour être constructible, les parcelles doivent avoir une surface et une largeur minimale de 120 m², et 8 m de large. Les lotissements étant strictement interdits
ARTICLE 88 : HAUTEURS MAXIMALES DES CONSTRUCTIONS Les hauteurs des constructions ne peuvent pas dépasser 8m (R+1). Au dessus se ces hauteurs, sont autorisés les parapets de terrasses accessibles dont la hauteur maximale est de 1,20 m, et les cages d'escaliers ou les machineries d'ascenseurs d'une hauteur maximale de 2,50 m.
ARTICLE 89 : IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX VOIES ET EMPRISES PUBLIQUES . Les constructions seront implantées à l'alignement sur voie, sauf indication contraire portée au plan d'aménagement.
ARTICLE 90 : IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS PAR RAPPORT AUX LIMITES SEPARATIVES. Les constructions sont implantées sur les limites séparatives latérales. Elles peuvent également être implantées sur la limite de fond de parcelle pour le rez de chaussée, l'étage observant un recul minimum de 4 m.
ARTICLE 91 : IMPLANTATION DES CONSTRUCTIONS SUR MEME PROPRIETE Les constructions ne peuvent pas être séparées par une distance inférieure à la hauteur du bâtiment le plus élevé : L>H, avec un minimum de 4 m.
TITRE III DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES AUX ACTIONS PONCTUELLES
CHAPITRE I: ACTION DE RESTAURATION
ARTICLE 92. CARACTERISTIQUES DE LA CONSTRUCTION A RESTAURER Est à restaurer totalement ou partiellement, toute construction classée ou inscrite sur la liste du patrimoine national ou jugée par l'Autorité gouvernementale chargée des affaires culturelles et l'instance chargée de la sauvegarde de la Médina de Fès comme ayant une certaine valeur.
ARTICLE 93. CHAMPS D'APPLICATION L'action de restauration peut être exigée ou imposée dans les zones M1, M2 et M3.
ARTICLE 94. PRESCRIPTIONS DE L’ACTION DE RESTAURATION 94.1 Au niveau architectural et artistique il est impératif de préserver : •La volumétrie extérieure du bâti, et son gabarit formel, •Les relations formelles existantes entre la construction objet de restauration et celles qui lui sont mitoyennes ou en vis à vis de façon à garder l’intégration de la construction dans son environnement, •La typologie architecturale et ceci en application des prescriptions suivantes : Il est interdit de construire, couvrir ou subdiviser partiellement ou totalement le patio de la maison,
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le vis à vis des chambres est à préserver tout en conservant l’emplacement des chambres et leurs portes d’entrée ainsi que leurs fenêtres, la hauteur sous plafond des chambres est à conserver en interdisant toute action de rajout ou de subdivision horizontale, préservation des éléments d’ornementation ou d’organisation spatiale tels que : fontaine, sebniya,... etc., maintien de l’emplacement et des dimensions des fenêtres existantes. 94.2 Préservation du décor : Il est interdit d’enlever les décors originaux (plâtre, zellij, bois sculpté) pour les remplacer par d’autres types de décors. Tout motif et tout élément est à restaurer et à reconstituer avec grand soin. Seuls les éléments disparus peuvent être substitués par leurs semblables ou identiques. 94.3. Au niveau technique : •Réseau d’assainissement, eau de source : Dans toute bâtisse objet de restauration et traversée par un réseau quelconque (eau de source, canalisation d’eau de rivière) on ne peut commencer les travaux qu’après curage, consolidation et restauration des dits réseaux.
•Matériaux : Ne sont autorisés que les matériaux traditionnels ou similaires : Les murs doivent être reconstruits ou restaurés, selon les cas, avec moellons, brique cuite traditionnelle, ...etc. Les mortiers et enduits composés de chaux et sable ou similaires. Les planchers en solives et poutre en bois. La menuiserie en bois.
•Etanchéité des terrasses : L’étanchéité des terrasses doit être assurée avec les matériaux traditionnels (sable + chaux) ou similaires et selon les techniques reconnues et pratiquées par les Maâlems. •Branchements et installations diverses : (électricité, eau potable, téléphone). Le branchement et l’installation de ces différents réseaux doivent être prévus au cours des travaux du gros oeuvre. Ils doivent être établis en conformité avec les prescriptions des services compétents (RADEEF/I.A.M). Les mesures essentielles suivantes doivent être prises : Electricité : . Une niche en bois doit être établie pour l’emplacement du (ou des) compteur(s) et disjoncteur(s). . L’installation doit être exécutée avant l’application de l’enduit.
Eau potable : . Nécessité de mettre un coffret étanche (prescriptions RADEEF) pour abriter le compteur et éventuellement la nourrisse. . Interdiction d’installer tout appareil (robinet, lavabo, tuyauterie...) sur un pilier, une structure porteuse ou près de leur environnement immédiat sans isolation appropriée. . Les endroits réservés à cet effet ne peuvent être que les services sanitaires les cuisines ou les fontaines en assurant techniquement les meilleures conditions d’alimentation, d’étanchéité et d’évacuation. . La plomberie ne peut en aucun cas être encastrée dans les murs ou les piliers. Elle sera installée apparente fixée sur les murs.
Réseau de télécommunication : Les lignes téléphoniques ne peuvent être encastrées dans les murs et piliers. Descentes d'évacuation:
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Les descentes d’évacuation ne peuvent en aucun cas être encastrées dans les murs ou piliers en cas de restauration. A part les locaux de service et sanitaires, les descentes d’eau ne pourrait être installées ni dans les pièces principales ou secondaires, ni dans le patio, ni sur les façades extérieures. Les raccords des tubes ne peuvent en aucun cas être au niveau du plancher.
CHAPITRE II: ACTION DE REHABILITATION
ARTICLE 95. CARACTERISTIQUES DE LA CONSTRUCTION A REHABILITER Toute construction traditionnelle nécessitant des aménagements et l'insertion d'équipements et de services pour assurer le bien être de ses occupants.
ARTICLE 96. PRESCRIPTIONS DEFINIES POUR L’ACTION DE REHABILITATION : 96.1. Espace et aspect architectural : •Il est interdit : de changer la typologie de la bâtisse, de transformer ou de modifier la halqa (façades intérieures), de subdiviser ou de couvrir le patio. La couverture pourrait être permise avec un matériau léger, aéré, et mobile, de subdiviser horizontalement les volumes des pièces principales. de perturber de vis à vis des pièces principales. •Dans le cas de réhabilitation pour deux ménages et plus, Il est impératif : de créer une entrée indépendante pour les différents logements ; celles ci se trouvant sur la façade, elles ne peuvent être en face à face d’une autre porte de maison ou d’une activité dans le cas des ruelles inférieures à 3m. d’assurer une cage d’escalier pour le logement à l’étage. L’espace qui sera réservé à la création de la cage d’escalier ne peut être soustrait d’une pièce principale que si : celle ci offre au moins 2,20 de la fenêtre de la pièce au mur transversal ; La maison ne dispose pas de local secondaire pouvant servir de cage d'escalier ; d’exécuter des séparations en matériaux légers permettant d’assurer l’indépendance et l’intimité entre les ménages ; de garder le garde corps existant « Darbouz » (s’il présente une valeur) et de le surélever à une hauteur au moins de 1,70. Les matériaux recommandés seraient le Moucharabieh ou la ferronnerie traditionnelle avec un vitrage translucide ou un maillage serré ou toute séparation similaire. Il est aussi permis de créer un patio différentiel à l’étage supérieur de la bâtisse de surface au moins égale à 9m2 à condition que l’intervention n’affecte pas les pièces principales de la bâtisse. 96.2 Relations de mitoyenneté, voisinage, encorbellement et sabat : •le droit de pose de la « gaïsa » solive reste toujours valable, •le droit aux sabats et encorbellements existant demeure inchangé, •toute sabat ou encorbellement projeté ou repris doit avoir les caractéristiques suivantes : Hauteur minimale 2,50. Plancher apparent en bois Ecartement par rapport aux sabats et encorbellement existants au moins de 1,50m dans un même linéaire de voie Largeur maximale de l’encorbellement de 0,60 m. La surface de l’encorbellement et (ou) sabat ne peut dépasser le 1/5 de la façade. Hauteur minimale des consoles 1,70m.
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Tout encorbellement ou sabat jugé par la commission de voirie préjudiciable à la rue ou aux voisins ne sera pas autorisé 96.3 Matériaux : Dans la zone de restauration urbaine, ne peuvent être utilisés que les matériaux traditionnels ou similaires. Dans la zone de réhabilitation urbaine, les murs extérieurs doivent être en matériaux traditionnels ou similaires. 96.4 Réseaux divers : Eau potable, électricité, téléphone, assainissement, eau de source (se référer à l'Article 12 du présent règlement). 96.5 Décor : (Se référer à l'Article 87 du présent règlement)
CHAPITRE III: ACTION DE RENOVATION
ARTICLE 97 Le présent chapitre est relatif à l’action de rénovation dans les zones M1, M2 et M3. L’action de rénovation est autorisée pour une construction qui n’a pas de valeur ou une ruine a reconstruire.
ARTICLE 98. DEFINITION DE L’ACTION L’action de rénovation est une reconstruction partielle ou globale d’une construction.
ARTICLE 99. ASPECT ARCHITECTURAL ET SPATIAL 99.1 .Le patio central ou latéral est la principale source d’éclairage et d’aération. Ses dimensions dont définies à l'Article 19 du présent règlement. 99.2. Dans la zone M1 ; l’action de rénovation d’une construction traditionnelle en ruine doit respecter les structures existantes de la bâtisse (Murs, porteurs, piliers, halqas) sur la base des traces existantes. Dans le cas de rénovation d’une construction sans valeur, les points 1,3 et 4 de cet Article sont appliqués. 99.3. La nouvelle construction doit s’intégrer parfaitement à son site : aspect volumétrique de façade, types d’ouverture et de portes et éléments architectoniques. 99.4. Le sous sol n’est autorisé que dans les parcelles à forte pente.
ARTICLE 100. MATERIAUX ET TECHNIQUES DE MISE EN OEUVRE •Pour tout travaux de fondation ou de déblayage ; le maître d’ouvrage est obligé d’assurer l’étaiement des murs mitoyens traditionnels afin d’éliminer tout risque ou danger. •Le béton armé ou tout autre matériau de substitution pourrait être utilisé. •Si l’action est dans la zone M1, le mur extérieur doit être revêtu avec un parement traditionnel de brique cuite traditionnelle (enduit de chaux + sable) ou un traitement similaire . •Si l’action de rénovation est partielle, une indépendance doit être assurée entre les matériaux nouveaux notamment le béton armé et les structures traditionnelles. 4Il n’est pas autorisé d’utiliser le mur mitoyen pour la transmission de toute charge ; un joint doit être assuré.
TITRE IV DISPOSITIONS APPLICABLES A LA REORGANISATION DES ACTIVITES
(Se conformer aux dispositions de l'A.M.P. de la ville de Fès)
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8. The ADER’s Geographic Information System
Source: ADER
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9. Guide to apply for permits at the baladiya
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10. Charter of Guest Houses
NORMES DE CLASSEMENTS MAISONS D'HOTES 1ère ET 2ème Catégorie
Maisons d'hôtes « Première catégorie »
A) Conditions générales :
La maison d’hôtes classée «Première catégorie » est un établissement caractérisé par son architecture marocaine traditionnelle, sa décoration et son ameublement de style typique marocain.
Les prestations et le confort doivent être de qualité. Le service du petit déjeuner est obligatoire.
Les chambres, suites et les locaux communs doivent dénoter un aspect luxueux sur le plan de l’aménagement et de l’équipement.
La maison d’hôtes « première catégorie » doit également présenter les caractéristiques suivantes :
avoir une situation bien sélectionnée ;
avoir une entrée accueillante, bien éclairée la nuit et signalée par un panonceau portant le nom et la catégorie de l’établissement ;
disposer d’un parking gardé jour et nuit. Le parking peut être substitué par des lieux d’arrêts à proximité ou aux environs de la maison d’hôtes spécialement réservés pour les clients.
B) Salons, hall de réception :
La réception doit être luxueusement décorée et marquée du cachet traditionnel marocain et comprendre les services suivants :
bureau ou comptoir d’accueil ;
conciergerie ayant à sa disposition portier, chasseur ;
cabines téléphoniques insonorisées ;
téléphone, fax ;
salon marocain doté d’un ameublement d’excellente qualité ;
patio ou cour intérieure ;
décoration typique marocaine composée de : Pièces d’art, tableaux sur le Maroc, lustres, sculptures de style traditionnel…etc ;
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ameublement typique composé de : Banquettes, sièges, tapis marocains, mobilier en bois sculpté ou peint…etc.
L'établissement doit disposer d’un service de restauration. Si l’établissement dispose de plus de dix (10) chambres.
Les sanitaires dans les locaux communs :
Des toilettes communes séparées pour hommes et femmes doivent être prévues dans les locaux communs . Ces locaux doivent être dotés des équipements nécessaires suivants:
Cabinets de toilette avec abattant et balayettes au niveau des cuvettes, urinoirs en nombre suffisant, lavabos avec eau courante chaude et froide (robinets mélangeurs ou des mitigeurs), sèche mains électriques, boîtes à rebuts et distributeurs de savon liquide, désodorisants et aération suffisante (fenêtres ou gaines dotées de ventilateurs).
C) Habitabilité :
La maison d’hôtes classée «première catégorie » doit disposer d’un minimum de ( 05) chambres et /ou suites et d’un maximum de trente (30) chambres et/ou suites.
C - 1) Les chambres:
Les chambres doivent avoir une superficie minimale de 14 m² et être dotées :
d’un éclairage naturel et artificiel suffisant ;
de rideaux d’occultation opaques de bonne qualité ;
d’un système de climatisation chaud et froid ;
d’une literie de qualité supérieure et de dimension confortable (Grand lit deux personnes
King size, ou lits jumeaux de 1,40 m X 2,00 m) ;
d’un mobilier raffiné, comprenant au minimum :
une penderie ou armoire ;
deux tables et deux lampes de chevet, un commutateur tête de lit ;
tapis ou descentes de lit ;
une écritoire avec le nécessaire pour écrire ;
une coiffeuse avec tabouret ;
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un appareil téléphonique ;
un fauteuil par personne et une table basse ;
un Porte bagages ;
un téléviseur relié par satellite;
un mini bar ;
un coffre fort individuel.
C - 2) Les Suites :
Les suites doivent avoir une superficie de 25 m² (salle de bain et penderie non inclues). Elles doivent être luxueusement aménagées, et décorées et comprendre , outre les commodités et l’ameublement requis pour les chambres :
un salon privé avec un mobilier de grande qualité ;
un appareil téléphonique supplémentaire ;
un téléviseur supplémentaire ;
un tapis de qualité supérieure.
C - 3) Les sanitaires :
Les chambres et/ou les suites doivent être équipées de salles de bain complètes d’une superficie au moins de 08 m ² comprenant : baignoire avec système antidérapant, poignée de sécurité, lavabo avec mitigeur, W.C isolé et bidet (facultatif).
La salle de bain doit être luxueuse, dotée d’une aération naturelle ou artificielle par gaine avec ventilateur et dotée :
d’un revêtement de sol et de mur de haute qualité ;
d’eau chaude en permanence ;
d’un linge de toilette de qualité supérieure muni de patères ;
de produits d’accueil de 1ère qualité.
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D) Dépendances et installations de service :
D-1) Salon (s) - bar:
La superficie du(de)(s) salon(s) doit être supérieure ou égale à 10% de la surface totale des chambres, et peut être limitée, en cas de problèmes techniques dûment justifiés, à 40 m². Ce local doit être luxueusement aménagé, particulièrement confortable et en parfait état d’entretien.
D-2) Room- Service :
Un Room service doit être prévu si l’infrastructure le permet pour assurer le service dans les chambres 24 h/24h (chariots, cloches à assiettes, cartes de mets,…).
D-3) Cafétéria :
Une cafétéria dûment équipée doit être aménagée dans un local indépendant offrant, exclusivement à la carte, le petit déjeuner pour la clientèle. Ce local doit être suffisamment aéré et comprendre :
un matériel d’exploitation en nombre suffisant (couverts, assiettes en porcelaine, verrerie de haute qualité, …etc) ;
un matériel de fonctionnement (machine à café, moulin à café…etc.).
D-4) Patio ou cour intérieure :
Cet espace doit être ombragé et peut être agrémenté, éventuellement, d’une fontaine ou planté d’arbres. Il peut servir également de salon cour pour servir le petit déjeuner.
D-5) Cuisine :
Si l’établissement assure à la clientèle des prestations complémentaires telles que le déjeuner ou le dîner, une cuisine doit être prévue à cet effet. Celle ci doit être étudiée et équipée de façon à assurer un service rapide et de qualité. Sa superficie doit être proportionnelle au nombre de clients traités par l’établissement.
Le personnel de cuisine doit porter la tenue réglementaire et respecter les règles d'hygiène corporelle et vestimentaire.
La cuisine doit être aménagée et équipée de la manière suivante :
un sas de séparation doit être prévu entre la cuisine et la salle de restauration de manière que ni les odeurs ni le bruit émanant de la cuisine ne puissent constituer une gêne pour la clientèle ;
le sol de la cuisine doit être doté d’un carrelage antidérapant étanche ;
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les murs de la cuisine doivent être carrelés à une hauteur de 1.60 m, de couleur claire et facilement lessivable ;
les locaux doivent être aérés et ventilés, les filtres du système de ventilation de la hotte d'extraction doivent être régulièrement nettoyés ou changés ;
toutes les fenêtres ou ouvertures doivent être munies de moustiquaires ;
une aire de cuisson constituée de matériel de fonctionnement nécessaire qui doit comprendre au moins quatre feux vifs, des plaques chauffantes et des fourneaux, tables de travail en inox, un passe de service, fours, friteuses…. ;
une aire pour la préparation de la cuisine froide ;
une aire pour la préparation du poisson ;
une aire pour la préparation des viandes ;
un local pâtisserie dûment équipé et aéré ;
la chambre froide, les réfrigérateurs et les congélateurs doivent être en nombre suffisant,
équipés de thermostats et voyants lumineux. La chambre froide doit être équipée
également d'une sonnette d'alarme. L'utilisation d'étagères et de cageots en bois est strictement interdite. Un gilet anti froid est obligatoire ;
un local ou une aire isolée réservée aux plonges (vaisselle /légumes/fruits). Elle peut – être séparée des autres plans de travail par une distance suffisante ou par une séparation physique à l'aide d'une cloison en verre ou d'un mur carrelé à une hauteur de 2m ;
une cave du jour dans un endroit aéré et accessible ;
un économat réglementaire composé de deux locaux distincts bien aérés, réservés respectivement au stockage des denrées alimentaires et aux produits d'entretien. En aucun cas, les produits d'entretien ou de désinfection ne doivent être stockés dans le même endroit où sont stockées les denrées alimentaires (risque de pollution et de confusion) ;
les bacs à ordures doivent être dotés d'un système de commande à pied facilement lessivable, munis de sacs de poubelle en plastique étanche à usage unique et placés à proximité des plans de travail;
des lave mains doivent être dotés d'un système de commande à pied et installés à proximité des postes de travail. Ceux ci devront être équipés de robinets mélangeurs d’eau chaude et froide, de
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distributeurs de savon liquide antiseptique, de brosses à ongle, de sèche mains électriques ou d'essuie mains à usage unique.
E) Les locaux du personnel:
Les locaux du personnel doivent être en parfait état de propreté munis d’un système de ventilation adéquat, bien équipés et comprendre un réfectoire, une salle de repos, des vestiaires séparés pour hommes et femmes ( à raison d’une douche, d’un lavabo et d’un W C pour 20 personnes), des armoires individuelles et éventuellement des dortoirs ou chambres individuelles.
Ces locaux doivent être équipés de toilettes munies de cuvettes et balayettes. Les lavabos doivent être situés à proximité des toilettes et munis de robinets mélangeurs d’eau chaude et froide, de distributeurs de savon liquide antiseptique toujours en état de fonctionnement, de brosses à ongle et d’essuie mains à usage unique ou de sèche mains électriques.
F) Prestations de service - Personnel :
La maison d’hôtes 1ère catégorie doit disposer de (0,9) employé par chambre.
Tout le personnel de l’établissement doit être issu d’une école hôtelière ou d’un centre de formation spécialisé ou bien, justifier d’une formation ou d’un apprentissage adéquat.
L’ensemble doit être affilié à la C.N.S.S conformément à la réglementation en vigueur.
F-1) La direction :
Le directeur de l’établissement doit être de bonne moralité, titulaire d’un diplôme en tourisme ou avoir bénéficié d'une formation en hôtellerie ou justifier d’une expérience en matière de gestion d’unités touristiques ;
F-2) Réception - Restaurant:
Le personnel de la réception et celui du restaurant doivent être constamment en tenue traditionnelle marocaine et parler, au moins, outre la langue arabe, deux langues étrangères dont le français.
F-3) Etages - Chambres :
L’entretien des chambres doit être assuré par une gouvernante qualifiée, assistée de femmes de chambres et/ou de valets de chambres.
F-4) Service de nuit :
Une permanence de nuit doit être assurée au niveau des services : réception, étages et entretien.
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G) lingerie - Buanderie :
La maison d’hôtes classée «première catégorie » doit assurer un service de lingerie buanderie pour la clientèle résidente (*1) . La lingerie doit comprendre : une machine à laver, une essoreuse, une calandreuse, un séchoir. La lingerie doit être séparée de la buanderie et doit disposer d’étagères de rangement et d’un stock de linge à raison de trois jeux par chambre au minimum.
(*1) Prestation facultative, si celle ci est sous traitée
H) Animation :
La maison d’hôtes «Première catégorie » doit proposer à sa clientèle diverses activités selon la région d'implantation :
ski nautique, canoë, équitation, golf, pêche, chasse, randonnées pédestres ou autres, tennis, V.T.T, proposition de circuits en 4x4 ;
salles de jeux de société ;
piscine (si l’infrastructure le permet) ;
l'établissement doit disposer de documentation sur le Maroc et procéder à l'organisation d'expositions d’oeuvres d’art marocain…etc..
I) Divers :
L’affichage des prix est obligatoire au niveau de la réception et des chambres.
Un livre de réclamations doit être mis à la disposition de la clientèle dans un endroit visible au niveau de la réception.
D’une salle polyvalente disposant d’un équipement complet pour conférences, banquets, séminaires…. etc., (si l’infrastructure le permet).
D’un système de climatisation chaud et froid installé au niveau de tous les locaux communs (restaurant, Bar, Salons, Réception, Hall,...).
D'un local pour la garderie d'enfants.
Disposer d'un service d’assistance médicale dirigé par un médecin de garde conventionné. Ce service comprend une infirmerie dirigée par une infirmière attitrée pour dispenser aux clients en cas d’urgence les soins de première nécessité et assurer aux employés une assistance médicale adéquate et permanente.
Disposer de brochures en plusieurs langues dont l’arabe contenant des informations sur
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l’établissement, son emplacement et sur sa localité d’implantation et qui doivent être mises à la disposition de la clientèle au niveau de la réception.
D'un service d’entretien, pour assurer en permanence le bon fonctionnement de toutes les installations et de tous les équipements.
L’utilisation de sommiers à ressorts est strictement interdite.
J) Sécurité :
Le personnel de l'établissement doit être initié à l’utilisation des moyens de lutte contre l’incendie et aux opérations de secourisme.
L'établissement doit être doté :
d’une liaison téléphonique directe avec les services de la protection civile ;
d’un éclairage sécurité qui doit être installé au niveau de tous les locaux communs, les couloirs et les circulations ;
de plans d’évacuation clairs et visibles avec consignes de sécurité incendie en arabe et en langues étrangères qui doivent être affichés dans les chambres, les couloirs et les locaux communs ;
d’escaliers et d’issues de secours signalisés en arabe et en langues étrangères ;
de moyens suffisants de lutte contre l’incendie qui doivent être signalisés et installés dans tous les locaux communs, les étages et les services techniques (extincteurs dont ceux à déclenchement automatique au niveau de la chaufferie, détecteurs de fumée…etc.. (Pour les établissements situés hors des médinas, ces moyens doivent être renforcés par des R.I.A et des bouches d’incendie).
Tous les équipements techniques de l’établissement doivent être conformes aux normes de sécurité en vigueur.
K) Hygiène et environnement :
L'établissement doit respecter les normes d'hygiène et environnementales en vigueur et doit
être doté :
d’un système pour le traitement régulier sur place des eaux de la piscine qui doivent être analysées périodiquement par un laboratoire officiel autorisé ;
l'établissement doit procéder régulièrement à la désinsectisation et à la dératisation de tous ses locaux par un organisme agréé, les contrôles doivent être enregistrés sur un registre spécial et remis en cas de besoin aux organismes de contrôle ;
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l'établissement doit être doté d'une chambre de conditionnement des ordures (lorsque l’infrastructure le permet) dûment carrelée, réfrigérée avec porte ajourée située à proximité de l’entrée du service. Ce local doit être géré de manière à être propre en permanence et prévenir la contamination des denrées alimentaires, de l’eau potable, des équipements et des locaux. A défaut, un espace réservé à cet effet.
La maison d'hôtes est dite «maison de charme» lorsqu'elle dispose, en sus des caractéristiques exigées pour la première catégorie, des critères suivants :
être située dans un site de haute valeur touristique, distinguée par son architecture traditionnelle marocaine exceptionnelle et par la présence de : grands patios et jardins fleuris et arborés, parcs, piscine, hammam et jacuzzi ;
avoir une décoration soignée et raffinée par des objets rares et antiques ;
présenter une gastronomie de luxe marocaine et internationale ;
être dotée d'un minimum de moyens d’hébergement, sous forme de chambres et de suites, dont le nombre varie de 20 à 40 chambres. Les chambres et les suites doivent avoir respectivement une superficie minimale allant de 20 à 30 m² ;
être dotée d'un centre de remise en forme (sauna, hammam, jacuzzi, hydrothérapie, massages, soins du corps et du visage…).
Maisons d'hôtes «deuxième catégorie»
A) Dispositions générales :
La maison d’hôtes classée «deuxième catégorie » est un établissement caractérisé par son architecture typiquement marocaine, par sa décoration et son ameublement de style traditionnel marocain.
Les prestations et le confort doivent être de qualité. Le service du petit déjeuner est obligatoire.
La maison d’hôtes «deuxième catégorie » doit:
Etre facile d’accès ;
Avoir une entrée bien éclairée la nuit et signalée par un panonceau apparent portant le nom et la catégorie de l’établissement ;
Disposer d’un parking gardé jour et nuit (à proximité de l’établissement ou plus loin). Le parking peut être substitué par des lieux d’arrêts à proximité ou aux environs de la maison d’hôtes spécialement réservés pour les clients.
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B) Salon, Hall de réception :
B-1) La réception doit être décorée et marquée du cachet traditionnel marocain et doit comprendre les services suivants :
Bureau ou comptoir d’accueil ;
Coffre fort général ;
Conciergerie ;
Téléphone et fax, cabines téléphoniques insonorisées.
La maison d'hôtes «deuxième catégorie» doit comprendre également :
Un salon marocain ;
Un patio ou une cour intérieure ;
Une décoration typique marocaine composée de : Pièces d’art, tableaux sur le Maroc, lustres, sculptures de style traditionnel…etc ;
Un ameublement typique composé de : Banquettes, sièges, tapis marocain, mobilier en bois sculpté ou peint.
L'établissement doit offrir un service de restauration s’il dispose de plus de dix (10) chambres.
Les sanitaires des locaux communs :
Des toilettes communes séparées pour hommes et dames doivent être prévues dans les locaux communs . Ces locaux doivent être dotés des équipements nécessaires suivants: Cabinets de toilette avec abattante et balayettes au niveau des cuvettes, urinoirs en nombre suffisant, lavabos avec eau courante chaude et froide (robinets mélangeurs ou des mitigeurs), sèche mains électriques, boîtes à rebuts et distributeurs de savon liquide, désodorisants et aération suffisante (fenêtres ou gaines dotées de ventilateur).
C) L’habitabilité:
La maison d’hôtes classée « Deuxième catégorie » doit disposer d’un minimum de cinq (04) chambres et/ou suites et d’un maximum de vingt (20) chambres et /ou suites.
C - 1) Les chambres:
Les chambres doivent avoir une superficie minimale de 12 m² et dotées:
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D’un éclairage naturel et artificiel suffisant ;
De rideaux d’occultation opaques ;
D’un système de climatisation chaud et froid ;
D’une literie de qualité (grand lit deux personnes : 1,90 m X 2,00 m ou deux Lits individuels : 1,40 X 1,80 m) ;
D’un mobilier comprenant au minimum :
Une penderie ou armoire;
deux tables et deux lampes de chevet ;
un commutateur tête de lit ;
tapis marocain ou descentes de lit ;
un fauteuil par occupant et une table basse ;
un porte bagages ;
une coiffeuse /écritoire ;
un appareil téléphonique.
C - 2) Les Suites :
Les suites doivent avoir une superficie de 20 m² (parties mansardées non inclues : salle de bain, penderie). Elles doivent être bien aménagées et décorées et comprendre , outre, les commodités et l’ameublement requis pour les chambres :
Un salon privé avec mobilier de qualité ;
une table basse ;
un mini bar ;
un téléviseur.
C-3) Les sanitaires :
Les chambres et/ou les suites doivent être équipées de salles de bain complètes d’une superficie de 03m² au moins comprenant : baignoire avec système antidérapant, poignée de sécurité, lavabos avec robinets mitigeurs, W.C isolé, et bidet (facultatif).
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La salle de bain doit disposer également d’une aération naturelle ou artificielle avec gaine munie de ventilateur et dotée :
D’un revêtement de sol et de mur de qualité ;
D’eau chaude en permanence ;
D’un linge de toilette de qualité muni de patères ;
De produits d’accueil.
D) Dépendances et installations de service :
D-1) Salon (s) - bar:
La superficie du (des) salon (s) doit être supérieure ou égale à 10 % de la superficie totale des chambres. Il doit être bien aménagé, confortable et en parfait état d’entretien.
D-2) Room- Service :
Un Room service doit être prévu (Si l’infrastructure le permet) pour assurer le service dans les chambres 24 h/24h (chariots, cloches à assiettes, cartes de mets,…).
D - 3) Cafétéria :
Une cafétéria dûment équipée doit être aménagée, dans un local indépendant, pour la préparation du petit déjeuner. Ce local doit être suffisamment aéré et comprendre :
5 Un matériel d’exploitation en nombre suffisant (couverts, assiettes, verrerie…etc.). 11. Un matériel de fonctionnement (machine à café, moulin à café…etc.).
D- 4) Patio ou cour intérieure :
Cet espace peut servir, éventuellement, de salon cour pour le service du petit déjeuner.
D-5) Cuisine :
Si l’établissement assure à la clientèle des prestations complémentaires telles que le déjeuner ou le dîner, une cuisine doit être prévue à cet effet. Celle ci doit être étudiée et équipée de permettre l'application des principes élémentaires d'hygiène et de sécurité alimentaire et d'assurer un service rapide et de qualité. Sa superficie doit être proportionnelle au nombre de clients traités par l’établissement.
La cuisine doit être agencée et équipée de la manière suivante :
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Un sas de séparation doit être prévu entre la cuisine et la salle de restauration de manière à ce que ni les odeurs ni le bruit émanant de la cuisine ne puisse constituer une gêne pour la clientèle ;
Le sol de la cuisine doit être doté d’un carrelage antidérapant étanche ;
La cuisine doit être carrelée à une hauteur de 1.60 m, de couleur claire et facilement lessivable ;
Les locaux doivent être aérés et ventilés, les filtres du système de ventilation de la hotte d'extraction doivent être régulièrement nettoyées ou changées ;
Toutes les fenêtres ou ouvertures doivent être munies de moustiquaires ;
Une aire de cuisson constituée du matériel de fonctionnement nécessaire doit comprendre au moins quatre feux vifs, plaques chauffantes et fourneaux, tables de travail en inox, un passe de service, fours, friteuses… ;
Une aire pour la préparation de la cuisine froide ;
Une aire pour la préparation du poisson ;
Une aire pour la préparation des viandes ;
La chambre froide, le réfrigérateur et le congélateur doivent être équipés de thermostats et voyants lumineux. La chambre froide doit être équipée également d’une sonnette d’alarme. L'utilisation de cageots et d'étagères en bois est strictement interdite. Un gilet anti froid est obligatoire ;
Un local ou une aire isolée réservée à la plonge vaisselle. Elle peut être séparée des autres plans de travail par une distance suffisante ou par une séparation physique à l'aide d'une cloison en verre ou d'un mur carrelé à une hauteur de 2m ;
Une cave du jour dans un endroit aéré et accessible ;
Un économat réglementaire composé de deux locaux distincts bien aérés, réservés respectivement au stockage des denrées alimentaires et aux produits d'entretien. En aucun cas, les produits d'entretien ou de désinfection ne doivent être stockés dans le même endroit où sont stockées les denrées alimentaires (risque de pollution et de confusion) ;
Les bacs à ordures doivent être dotés d'un système de commande à pied facilement lessivable, munis de sacs de poubelle en plastique étanche à usage unique et placés à proximité des plans de travail;
Des lave mains doivent être dotés d'un système de commande à pied et installés à proximité des postes de travail. Ceux ci devront être équipés de robinets mélangeurs d’eau chaude et froide, de distributeurs de savon liquide antiseptique, de brosses à ongle, de sèche mains électriques ou
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d'essuie mains à usage unique.
E) Les locaux du personnel:
Les locaux du personnel doivent être en parfait état de propreté munis d’un système de ventilation adéquat, bien équipés et comprendre un réfectoire, une salle de repos, des sanitaires séparés pour hommes et femmes (à raison d’une douche alimentée en eau chaude, un lavabo et un W C pour 20 personnes) de même que des vestiaires séparés hommes/femmes dotés d'armoires individuelles. Ces locaux peuvent comporter éventuellement des dortoirs ou des chambres individuelles.
Ils doivent être équipés de toilettes munies de cuvettes et balayettes. Les lavabos doivent être situés à proximité des toilettes et munis de robinets mélangeurs d’eau chaude et froide, de distributeurs de savon liquide antiseptique toujours en état de fonctionnement, de brosses à ongle et d’essuie mains à usage unique ou de sèche mains électriques.
F) Prestations de service - personnel :
La maison d’hôtes « 2ème catégorie » doit disposer de 0,7 employé par chambre.
Tout le personnel de l’établissement doit être issu d’une école hôtelière ou d’un centre de formation spécialisé ou bien, justifier d’une formation ou d’un apprentissage complet.
L’ensemble doit être affilié à la C.N.S.S conformément à la réglementation en vigueur.
F-1) La direction :
Le directeur de l’établissement doit être titulaire d’un diplôme en tourisme ou avoir bénéficié d'une formation en hôtellerie ou justifié d’une expérience en matière de gestion d’unités touristiques ;
F-2) Réception - Restaurant:
Le personnel de la réception et celui du restaurant doivent être constamment en tenue traditionnelle et parler, au moins, outre la langue arabe, deux langues étrangères dont le français.
F-3) Etages - Chambres :
L’entretien des chambres doit être assuré par une gouvernante qualifiée, assistée de femmes de chambres et/ou de valets de chambres.
F-4) Service de nuit :
Une permanence de nuit doit être assurée au niveau des services : réception, étages et entretien.
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J) Animation :
La maison d’hôtes « deuxième catégorie » doit proposer diverses activités selon la région d'implantation :
Ski nautique, canoé, équitation, golf, pêche, chasse, randonnées pédestres ou autres, tennis, V.T.T, proposition de circuits 4x4, etc ;
L'établissement doit disposer de documentation sur le Maroc et procéder à l'organisation d'expositions d’oeuvres d’art marocain ;
Salle de jeux de société ;
Piscine (si l’infrastructure le permet).
H) Divers :
L'établissement doit disposer :
D'une infirmerie dirigée par une infirmière attitrée pour dispenser aux clients en cas d’urgence les soins de première nécessité et assurer aux employés une assistance médicale adéquate et permanente ;
De brochures en arabe et en langues étrangères contenant des informations sur l’établissement, son emplacement et sur sa localité d’implantation et qui doivent être mises à la disposition de la clientèle au niveau de la réception ;
D'un service d’entretien pour assurer en permanence le bon fonctionnement de toutes les installations et de tous les équipements ;
De tableaux des prix affichés obligatoirement au niveau de la réception et des chambres ;
D’un livre de réclamations qui doit être mis à la disposition de la clientèle dans un endroit visible au niveau de la réception ;
D’un système de climatisation chaud et froid ;
L’utilisation de sommiers à ressorts est strictement interdite.
I) Sécurité :
Le personnel de l'établissement doit être initié à l’utilisation des moyens de lutte contre l’incendie et aux opérations de secourisme.
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L'établissement doit être doté :
D’une liaison téléphonique directe avec les services de la protection civile ;
D’un éclairage sécurité qui doit être installé au niveau de tous les locaux communs, les couloirs et les circulations ;
De plans d’évacuation clairs et visibles avec consignes de sécurité incendie en arabe et en langues étrangères qui doivent être affichés dans les chambres, les couloirs et les locaux communs ;
D’escaliers et d’issues de secours signalisés en arabe et en langues étrangères ;
De moyens suffisants de lutte contre l’incendie qui doivent être signalisés et installés dans tous les locaux communs, les étages et les services techniques (extincteurs dont ceux à déclenchement automatique au niveau de la chaufferie, détecteurs de fumée…etc.. ). Dans le cas où l’établissement est situé hors médina, ces moyens doivent être renforcés par des R.I.A et des bouches d’incendie) ;
Tous les équipements techniques de l’établissement doivent être conformes aux normes de sécurité en vigueur.
J) Hygiène et environnement:
L'établissement doit respecter les normes d'hygiène et environnementales en vigueur et doit être doté :
D’un système pour le traitement régulier sur place des eaux de piscine qui doivent être analysées périodiquement par un laboratoire officiel autorisé ;
L'établissement doit procéder régulièrement à la désinsectisation et à la dératisation de tous ses locaux par un organisme agréé, les contrôles doivent être enregistrés sur un registre spécial et remis en cas de besoin aux organismes de contrôle ;
D'une chambre de conditionnement des ordures dûment carrelée, réfrigérée avec porte ajourée située à proximité de l’entrée de service. Ce local doit être géré de manière à être propre en permanence et à prévenir la contamination des denrées alimentaires, de l’eau potable, des équipements et des locaux. A défaut, une aire réservée à cet effet.
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11. Heritage day organised by two students
http://networkedblogs.com/wBphf
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12. Visit of Gigi’s patio
This report mix two visits I attended to at Gigi's house. I do not take account of the tourists’ comments, except when they clearly orientate the discussion.
In the patio, Gigi gathers a group of 7 tourists around her. Two of them are clients in the house and already had a short presentation. Tourists sit on the seats and an employee comes to serve them water. Gigi starts. "This house is the richest in all respects, in the view of its oldness, its architectural decoration originality, and its mystery. […] So, this house is original for several reasons. Firstly, it is the oldest house we have visited in the guest house tour. Other houses date back to the early 20 th century, but this one is 260 years old. It is from the 18 th century. So, it is a first characteristic of its originality. Its second originality: it is the only one on the Andalus bank we have visited. Other houses in this neighbourhood also have the same colours [of carved plaster]. It is typical of this neighbourhood. The Andalus bank is the bank of scientists, because when Muslims and Jews quibbled a bit, the latter decided to cross the oued [river ] and to settle there, beyond the city walls that have been pushed later, as now they include the entire medina. We call it the Andalus bank, because it was inhabited by those fleeing Spain and Christians. […] So, this city is stepped in history, and this house also by the same token. I told you about the neighbourhood. But for the house, it is more difficult [to have information ] because everything is written in old Arabic. And until now, nobody has succeeded in translating it. So, another particularity of this house is that writings are everywhere. I other houses, there are no writings, or only on white plaster with the same pattern. In some houses, there are sentences written in plaster, but it is repeated standard sentences. But in many house, there is no writing in their decoration. Only flowers and repeated drawings. But here, there is this richness. Every sentence is different. And it is always written in blue or green. I don't know why. Well, green, we can guess it is the colour of Islam, but blue, is it the blue of Fez? […] [On the carved plasters] are the original colours. We have removed dust and hidden some garish colours. Under the arcades, the blue was a little bit too deep, not very happy for the eye. And we painted the columns. But in my view, it is a mistake because the painted capitals displayed symbols. Luckily, I discovered them on my computer with the picture I had taken. Symbols were only on the high gabs [carved plaster ] that constituted a uniform limit. So this mistake is not too serious. However, the removal of some unhappy colours has softened the sight. […]. Another originality of this house is its height because other houses are half lower. Well, maybe Simon's house…" As people are looking upstairs, a discussion starts about the rooftop covering. "Before, it was open and there is a room over there where water was drained off, rainwater or sewage. And it was cold! I remember, when we visited the house for the first time, it was winter. We were in this room [she points to the living room] and there was no chimney at that time. We were freezing! And the poor grandmother who was lying in this room [still the living room], she was not so healthy. She died a few weeks after we bought the house by the way. She was lying on a small bed under layers of blankets. It was cold and humid. They were happy to leave I think. Sure that I laugh with that today, but it was not easy at that time. So, I continue with the house. We are in a Sufi house, and there are artistic characteristics we do not find anywhere else. These characteristics are the following: no exact symmetry and no vacuum. All what you see, all what is written, is filled with leaves and flowers. Just not to leave free space. And symbolic drawings like this one there, if you have a look at the small leaves, they are not all oriented in the same direction. Even the hourglass here [carved in plaster ], you see, there are two curls on this one, but not on this one. So the symbol is similar, but the details are different. And this is typically Sufi. We think it is similar, but it is not dead, it is not fixed. What is symmetric is stiff, and this is deathly. […]. So, symbolism is the must in this house. And this symbolism speaks of everything: man, women, and relations with God and between men and women. And all the religions are represented, including philosophies. Let’s start with those writings [boards of painted wood with blue writings above the 387 fountain and, in front, the bartal ]. As I said, nobody succeeded in translating them. It is not Koranic sentences, but poems. Two people approximately translated one in more or less in the same words. It is written this house is a house for guests, a house for culture and science, and that those who come may find what they are looking for. It is interesting to notice they had already written it was a guest house 1. And a man carrying out his Ph. D. research about Sufism told me it was probably a zawiya . A zawiya is a house to host guests in need of food and a shelter. […] And architects told me that with the triangulation on the pillars, the house could hold 1000 years. Also, something is very interesting. The house was built on the numbers 8 and 12, because the patio, by some centimetres, I measured it, is a square of 8 by 8 metres, and the height is 12 metres. The doors are four metres high, so it is easy to see that they fit three times in the patio height. We also find the 8 and the 12 in the fountain. There [on the central mosaic pattern of the fountain ], you have 8 circles and the square named Solomon's seal. And 8 is the number of paradise's doors according to the Koran. And the 12 with 12 blue and 12 green circles there [at the same time, she points with a red laser pointer]. Well, and at the centre, there is a central sun that has 24 points. And 24, it is 24 hours, so one day. And within this sun, there is a moon and a star. The moon represents the woman, because they have the same cycle of 28 days. And the star represents the man with its 5 senses. Leonard Da Vinci drew a man in a 5 points star. So, we have the man and the woman in 24 hours. And 8 planets around represent the cosmos. So, it is the microcosm in the macrocosm. All the fountains represent the cosmos. All the fountains are based on the idea of representing the cosmos. And 28 elements compose the rib. 28 is also the number of letters in the Arab alphabet. So, 28 links to the moon or the letters. But I cannot tell you more precisely because I do not have knowledge in Arabic. […] Also, I learnt that fountains were built after the gold number 2. Mosaic tillers divide the base in 3, 5 or 7 to make the rib. But in the gold number, there are pi and the square. All of this is very complex, but they manage to make those wonderful patterns. […] And there is something interesting here also [at the same time, she points with a red laser pointer on a piece of carved plaster above the entrance in the living room]. These drawings represent the moon cycle, you see? You have the waning moon and the waxing moon. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. The Arab calendar is based on the moon, like that of Inca. So, you have three times seven, that is 21. 21 days. But a moon cycle is 28 days. Except that when the moon is joint to the sun, we do not see it, it is the black moon. So, the moon cycle is represented here. And the moon relates to the woman. It is everywhere, and it is signified in various ways. And here [a few centimetres right what she showed ], you have a women character from behind. Of course, it is quite coarse, because you cannot show life in Islam. So it is shown in a different perspective. You have the red hair, the neck, the shoulders, the spinal column and the thighs [she shows at the same time with the laser pointer ]. And here, you have fishes and shrimps. And there are roses too. Roses of Islam. The rose is a spiritual symbol very very important in Sufism, it is a reference. And Rosicrucians also have it. So, all the religions are inscribed in the patio. I stand here and show on this panel with the laser pointer. Here, you have the rose of Islam. Between the columns, there are Stars of David. You take the diagonal lines, and if you take three blue triangles and three yellow triangles, you have a Star of David. And around, there are acanthus leaves and Greek frieze to signify philosophy. Above, there is the Solomon's seal. And this symbol here, I also found it at Volubilis, a Roman site near Meknès. And here, there are the three Trinity flames and here the name of Allah. And there is maybe an African mask. So, look at the laser pointer, I go up, I go up. Ah, we do not see it anymore, I start again. So I go up and here it is. There is a star, a moon on the forehead, eyebrow, eyes, nose, mouth. […] And here [on a piece of carved plaster above the
1 On this board is written douyoufi , which means in classical Arabic guest. So that a better translation is not guest, but house that welcome guests coming. It is also written ana bayt al 3ouloum, I'm a house of science. (or knowledge) A last sentence is wa sakini lahoum lhana, or in other words "and happiness for those who live here". So it is poem in which the house speaks. 2 The gold number, or ɸ, is 1,618 033 988 7. This proportion [(1+√5)/2] is useful in the drawing of the gold rectangle, the gold spiral, the pentagon, and the pentagram. 388 entrance f the living room ], there is something interesting. I named it the Incas, but it could be whatever. So look, the laser pointer is here. There is the moon there, yellow, with feathers above, like Aztecs, who had a lunar calendar. And there are two characters. This one has three parts, whose one a bit elongated. It is his sex, a man. And on the other one, it is a bit oval, a women. And, very interesting, the moon is represented with points upwards. The moon is everywhere with the points downwards. And here, there is a kind of sword, with a crux and here something like a djelaba with the arms here. Legs and body here, and the head. […] Ah, I didn't show you the Hindu and Freemason symbols. So, do you see in the capital there, above, there are a triangle, a compass and a set square. And close by, there is a kind of yellow oval with a red hole at the centre. It represents the Hindu yoni." Answering to a question about how Sufi knew about all the religions, Gigi answered, and then followed her tour: "Because Sufi went everywhere. They sent caravans as far as Tibet. And esotericism is linked everywhere. It is like with Crusades, everybody brings his part of knowledge and belief. It mixes and leaves again. But the symbol remains universal. Ah, I also have to tell you about the windows. Do you know the four levels of consciousness? The first level is very tiny; it is the material, the mineral. The second, a bit more evolved, is the vegetal. The third is the animal, and the last the human. So, on this first window, you have the mineral. Well, there is no proof, it is just a drawing. But there, it evolves, it blossoms and becomes a flower. So, it is the vegetal world. While here, there is a fish, so we are in the animal kingdom. And the last one is a head with read inside. This is the human. And to confirm it, look underneath, there is a womb with the fallopian tubes. And wait, I'm going to show you the sexual act. So, the sexual act is on the columns. Look at the columns, in the angle. For instance, we find this volute everywhere. This pattern is reproduced. But what is less obvious is the shape in three parts at its base. It is a phallic symbol. Then, on the aside column, it has become wider. In fact, it is a phallus in the womb. The shape has widened, and there is emission of something. You can clearly see there is a movement. It is not only a leaf, but small lines show there is a movement. And to proof it is really this, you know that the moon is in analogy with the woman. So here, there is the moon on both sides, and the same head with the small arms, then the legs. And between the legs, you have this shape […] They couldn't represent human beings, so they developed another way to represent it, to tell things. Man and woman are everywhere. This is the life, it is reproduction, creation."
13. Technical form provided to owners (in French) for the guest houses circuit
Présentation de votre maison d'hôtes/ Presentation of your guest house
Remarques préliminaires : 2. Répondre à ce questionnaire prend environ 20 minutes. Merci d'y répondre le plus sérieusement possible, en fonction de vos connaissances. Il est possible de fractionner vos réponses dans le temps (répondre section par section). 3. Si votre maison d'hôtes est composée de plusieurs maisons, merci de préciser votre réponse maison par maison. Preliminary remarks: 2. To fill this form takes about 20 minutes. Thanks to fill it as seriously as possible according to your knowledge. It is possible to stagger your answers in time (answer section by section). 3. If your guest house is composed by several houses, thanks to fill the form for each one.
Nom de la MAISON / Name of the HOUSE: Adresse de la maison /Address of the house: Cette maison a t elle connu plusieurs dénominations/ Had this house several names:
Si oui lesquelles / If yes, which one:
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Historique/ History
Date de construction / Construction date:
Date d'achat/ Date of purchase:
Familles ayant habité la maison (nom, profession de la famille, date d'achat) / Families having inhabited the house (name, occupation, date of purchase):
Anecdotes relatives à l'histoire de la maison/ Anecdotes related to the house’s history:
Fonctions successives de la maison (lieu de résidence principale, lieu de réception des hôtes, lieu de dépôt, lieu spirituel,...)/ Successive functions of the house (main residence, place to receive guests, warehouse, spiritual place, etc.):
Etat des lieux /Inventory
Etat de la maison lors de l'achat (habité ou non, état du bâti)/ State of the house when bought (inhabited or not, building state) :
Quelles transformations ont été réalisées depuis la construction jusqu’à votre achat/ Which transformations were made between the construction until your purchase? :
12. structure (extension ou réduction de la surface)/ Structure (expansion or reduction of the surface area) : 13. intérieur (construction de mur, pièce,..)/ Interior (construction of a wall, a room) :
Quelles transformations avez vous réalisées afin d’aménager la maison d’hôtes/ Which transformations have you undertaken to convert the house in a guest house:
structure (extension ou réduction de la surface)/ Structure (expansion or reduction of the surface area): intérieur (construction de mur, pièce,..) / Interior (construction of a wall, a room):
Nombre de chambres et de suites/ Number of bedrooms and suites: Nombre de pièces à usage collectif (salons, salle à manger)/ Number of collective rooms (living rooms, dining rooms): Surface au sol/ Surface area on the ground: Surface du patio/ Surface area of the patio: Surface totale habitable/ Total living area :
Caractéristiques de la maison / Characteristics of the house
Caractéristiques architecturales majeures (présence de colonnes, d’une coursive, de balcons, d’un bartal, d’un jardin…) / Major architectural characteristics (columns, passageway, balconies, bartal, garden): Style d'ameublement : comment caractériseriez vous le mobilier de votre maison (provenance des meubles, ambiance créée,....) ? / Style of furnishing: how would you define the furniture in your house (where does it come from, resulting atmosphere)?
Style du décor architectural (Présence et description)/ Style of the architectural décor (presence
390 and description) :
2. halqa / halqa:
3. darbouz (bois ou métal)/ darbouz (wood or metal) :
4. grandes portes en bois (sculptées ou peintes)/ big doors in wood (carved or painted) :
5. fontaine (centrale ou murale)/ fountain (central or mural) :
6. zellige au sol/ mosaic on the ground :
7. zellige mural (couleurs et motifs variés ou non)/ wall mosaic (colours and patterns) :
8. plâtre sculpté (peint ou non)/ Carved plaster (painted or not):
9. plafond gaïza /gaïza ceiling :
10. plafond bois peint / painted wood ceiling:
Environnement/ Surroundings
Nom du quartier et activités caractéristiques (lieu artisanal, de commerce, résidentiel, de culture agricole) / Name of the neighbourhood and specific activities (craft place, commercial place, residential place, cultural place, agricultural place):
Date des premières constructions dans le quartier/ Date of the first constructions in the neighbourhood:
Equipements collectifs principaux (hammam, médersa, mosquée, four, garage à mules, souk…) dans le quartier (préciser ceux qui sont encore en activité et ceux qui ne le sont plus) / Main public facilities (hammam, medersa, mosque, oven, souk, mule stable):
Grandes familles ayant vécu dans le quartier / Famous families in the neighbourhood :
14. The nest of viper in the guest houses tour
A first huge debate concerned official guides to go with tourists. According to some owners, official guides are thieves and only think of their commission. If they do not have anything to earn, they will be unfaithful to the principle of the tour, that is to say not being commercial. But having an official guide solved several problems: the group of tourists is legally accompanied, the guide speaks several languages and can then provide translations in case of a multi linguistic group. Moreover, a well paid guide wouldn't go in the bazaars and might even find clients for a later private tour. The partners to involve was also subject to debate. As a neutral framework and because being providers of cultural events in Fez, we contacted the Fondation Esprit the Fès, as well as the Fondation Ducci, the French Institute and the Spanish Institute. But it was finally decided to inscribe the tour under the supervision of the Association of Guest Houses, as it was the first association concerned. The Fondation de Fès was said to have a monopoly on cultural events and the threat was to be eaten by the Fondation as it has already happened in the past (with the Jazz festival for instance, which was a guest house owners’ initiative but became a Fondation Esprit de Fès’ event). The Fondation Ducci was too new, while the two institutes were already very busy
391 and could only fund the project. Concerning the technical and expert support, students of the National School of Architecture (ENA), members of the ADER and private architects were put to the fore. We had several meetings with the ENA director, which took the opportunity to make this help educational for his students and integrate it into the school year program. Students were by no way experts in heritage, and not yet in architecture, so even this punctual work would take some time (the time for students to make their work during the academic year, so a year at least while owners needed information as soon as possible). However, according to one French owner, most owners know their house, at least enough to make a basic presentation of it, so that the involvement of any kind of expert is not useful, if it is not a lack of time. The need for a monograph of the house, and the neighbourhood is unnecessary for the project, but could be carried aside. Those who don't know about their house only have to read and learn a bit about it, such as the Revault and Golvin. As a consequence, a technical form was sent to the participant owners, but it was finally abandoned because some owners were unable to fill the form, and a lot of information was not interesting for tourists. Finally, the owners decided to find information themselves, and to submit their written discourse about their house to the owner team to correct it. Lots of discussion also arose about the normative documents and the practical processes to support the project. It was decided to make a Charter of commitment to avoid unfair competition, a book to sell in several languages (French, English, Spanish, German) about visited houses for tourists not speaking the main language of a specific tour to be nonetheless able to follow it and for any tourist to have a souvenir. Also, it was decided to charge for the tour. How much to charge and what to do with the money? After an agreement on 100 Dh per persons, a price of 80 Dh, and 150 for two, was decided. Part of the money would serve to pay the guide (400 Dh per tour) and the Association of Guest House would take the remaining money with the idea of editing a book later on. Finally, to make the reservation and collect the money, it was decided to open the tour to any tourist in Fez, but the reservation had to be made by phone or mail to a specific owner in charge of calling the guide, sending an email a day earlier to the owners concerned by the visit to warn them, and of collecting the money during the tour in his house. Facing the lack of motivation of owners to join the project, several explanations were put to the fore: the reluctance of Moroccan owners to receive Moroccans in their house, the threat of unfair competition, the fear of possible theft during the visit and of robbery as the visit would have been a reconnaissance mission, the possible inconvenience for tourists resting in the guest house. But it soon appeared that with asking money for the visit, Moroccan resident wouldn't be interested in the visit (too expensive). Also, it was decided to schedule the visit at a time of the day less disturbing as possible, and on a day where there is nothing else to do in the medina: Friday afternoon, as "the medina is closed" on this prayer day.
15. Appel de Mr. Amadou Mahter M'Bow, Directeur général de l'UNESCO, pour la sauvegarde de la ville de Fès, le 9 avril 1980
En fondant Fès, au deuxième siècle de l'Hégire, dont nous célébrons cette année le quatorzième centenaire, Moulay Idriss Al Azhar voulait, dans un esprit d'humanité, qu'elle soit la Cité de la Foi et du Savoir. Et ces vertus, Fès les a incarnées, au plus haut point, tout au long de sa brillante histoire. Symbole du génie créateur de l'Islam, de sa haute faculté intégratrice, Fès est un témoignage exemplaire de ce que les hommes, mus par la même foi et le même idéal, et venus vers elle d'horizons divers, de Kairouan ou de Cordoue, de l'Est, du Nord ou di Sud, ont pu réaliser en commun. Lieu de rencontres et d'échanges, elle a trouvé, sur le plan urbanistique, une expression à la mesure du dessein de ses illustres fondateurs et des fonctions économiques, sociales et culturelles que son expression et le génie de ses habitants ont fait éclore. On pourrait difficilement trouver, dans l'agencement de l'ensemble de mosquées, de sanctuaires, de palais, de maisons, de
392 caravansérails et de marchés qui la constituent, ordonnance mieux équilibrée, plus subtile ingéniosité. L'espace urbain lui même a été organisé dès ses origines de manière à intégrer la cité à son environnement. Réalisant une parfaite symbiose entre son site et ses fonctions, entre ses ambitions et ses moyens, Fès est ainsi depuis plus de mille ans, et à juste tire, l'une des cités les plus prestigieuses du monde islamique. L'Université Qaraouiyine, construite quelques décennies après la fondation de la cité, et qui demeure, avec sa moquée, un foyer d'enseignement et de méditation, est sans doute une des premières universités du monde à avoir pu maintenir son activité pendant plus de dix siècles. Autour d'elle et de tant d'autres mosquées se sont ajoutés les sanctuaires, les célèbres médersas et les zaouia qui ont généreusement accueilli des étudiants venant de toutes les corporations de la ville et de lointaines contrées, pour vivre et travailler ensemble auprès de maitres illustres. Ainsi, située au carrefour des grands itinéraires intellectuels et religieux que les fameuses routes commerciales font trop souvent oublier, Fès a constitué un des noeuds d'un réseau intellectuel qui a profondément marqué la trame des relations entre diverses régions du continent africain, de l'Orient Islamique et de l'Occident européen. Elle a été un des principaux foyers d'étude, par où le savoir scientifique et la réflexion fondamentale, épanouis sous l'impulsion de l'Islam, allaient stimuler et parfois même susciter un développement sans précédent des connaissances au seuil du monde moderne. Mille and d'histoire n'avaient ni affecté le tissu urbain, ni entamé l'homogénéité architecturale, ni même troublé l'activité intellectuelle et artistique de la ville de Fès. Il n'en va plus de même aujourd'hui. Les transformations rapides que connaissent toutes les parties du monde, et en particulier les villes anciennes, ont eu des répercussions directes sur la Cité. Les changements sont devenus si importants au cours des dernières décennies que Fès risque, sous la pression de contraintes démographies, sociales et économiques sans équivalent dans son histoire, de perdre l'originalité profonde qui en fait un des joyaux les plus purs de la culture islamique. Des ensembles d'une grande valeur architecturale se délabrent; certaines infrastructures publiques, telles le système d'alimentation d'eau et de drainage des eaux usées, ont atteint un seuil de saturation dangereux. L'artisanat traditionnel, qui est une des sources les plus fécondes de son art, est gravement menacé. Les différents quartiers de la ville, entrainés comme par un tourbillon auquel ils ne peuvent résister, perdent peu à peu chacun leur fonction spécifique. Pour sauver Fès, le gouvernement marocain déploie depuis des années des efforts d'une grande envergure. La campagne internationale que la dix neuvième session de la Conférence générale de l'Unesco m'a demandé d'entreprendre en vue de la sauvegarde, de la réhabilitation et de la réanimation de Fès répond aux mêmes préoccupations que celles qui ont conduit l'Unesco à lancer les campagnes de la sauvegarde des monuments de Nubie en Haute Egypte et au Soudan, de Venise. Mis, c'est une campagne sans précédent par sa nature, dans l'action de l'Unesco. C'est la première qui soit entreprise en faveur d'une ville islamique. L'action a mener constitue, par son ampleur, l'exemple d'un des défis majeurs que l'humanité doit relever pour préserver et enrichir son héritage culturel, devant les contraintes que nous impose un processus de modernisation et d'industrialisation accélérés. Ce défi est à la hauteur de capacités et de l'imagination de l'homme. Voilà pourquoi, du site de cette terre qui est par excellence celle de l'homme et de sa quête de l'Absolu, je lance aujourd'hui un appel solennel à la solidarité internationale. J'invite les gouvernements de tous les Etats membres de l'Unesco, les organisations internationales, gouvernementales et non gouvernementales, les institutions publiques et privées, les organismes de financement, les peuples des différents nations, à participer par des contributions volontaires de toute nature, à la Campagne de Sauvegarde, de Réhabilitation et de réanimation de la ville de Fès. J'invite tous les intellectuels, artistes et écrivains, ulémas et juristes, historiens et sociologues, ainsi
393 que tous ceux qui ont pour mission d'informer, journalistes, chroniqueurs, professionnels de la presse, de la radio, de la télévision, du cinéma, à contribuer à sensibiliser le public de tous les pays aux problèmes de Fès et à l'inciter à contribuer à sa sauvegarde. Je forme l'espoir que les contributions soient à la mesure de la vaste tâche à entreprendre et qu'elles permettent de conserver, pour toujours, l'un des environnements urbains les plus harmonieux que l'homme ait créé, en même temps que de préserver, pour le bonheur de ceux qui l'habitent de de ceux qui la visiteront, son âme collective, qui, depuis plus de onze siècles, porte le plus actuel des messages: celui de la solidarité et de la fraternité de tous les hommes.
Call of Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, UNESCO General Director, for the Safeguard of the city of Fez, 9 April 1980
Moulay Idriss Al Azhar founded Fez in the second century of hegira – whose we celebrate this year the fourteenth centenary – in a spirit of humanity. He wanted Fez to be the City of Faith and Knowledge. Fez embodied these virtues at the highest degree throughout her brilliant history. Symbolizing the creative genius of Islam and thanks to her high integrative ability, Fez is a sterling example of what human beings prompted by the same faith and the same ideal, and coming from various origins – from Kairouan, from Cordoba, from the East, from the North or the South – realised in common. As a place of encounter and exchange, she expressed an urbanism fulfilling the intentions of her illustrious founders and the economic, social and cultural functions her extension and the genius of her inhabitants drawn forth. One can hardly find a more balanced organisation, a more subtle ingenuity in the organisation of her constituting mosques, shrines, palaces, houses, caravanserai and markets. The urban space itself was organised since the beginning to integrate the city to its environment. Realising a perfect symbiosis between her site and her functions, between her ambitions and her means, Fez is rightly since more than thousand years, one of the most prestigious city in the Islamic world. The Qaraouiyine University, build shortly after the city foundation and still, with its mosque, a place of instruction and meditation, is probably one of the first university in the world that succeeded in maintaining her activities during more than ten centuries. Around it, as well as around so many other mosques, shrines, the famous madrasa and zaouia blossomed to generously host students coming from all the guilds in the city and far away, to live and work together with illustrious masters. Located at the crossroad of important intellectual and religious roads that the famous commercial roads too often tend to shadow, Fez was a hub in an intellectual network that deeply left its mark on the relations between various regions of the African continent, Islamic Orient, and European West. She was one of the main seats of knowledge through which academic knowledge and fundamental thinking, blossoming under the impetus of Islam, stimulated and even arise an unprecedented development in knowledge at the threshold of the modern world. Thousand years of history hadn't taken on the urban fabric, or undermined the architectural homogeneity, or even disrupted the intellectual and artistic activity in the city of Fez. This is no longer true today. Rapid changes in many regions of the world, and particularly in old cities, had direct impacts on the City. Changes became so important these last decades that Fez risks, under the pressure of demographic, social and economic constraints without historical parallel, to loose the deep originality making of her one of the purest jewel of the Islamic culture. Places of architectural value deteriorate. Public facilities such as the water and sewage system have reached a dangerous saturation point. Traditional craft, one of the most fertile source of art, is seriously threatened. The various neighbouhoods of the city, carried by a whirlwind they cannot resist to, loose slowly their specific function. To save Fez, the Moroccan Government has deployed wide scaled efforts since several years.
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The international campaign I was asked to undertake during the nineteenth General Conference Session for the safeguard, the rehabilitation and the revival of Fez answers to the same concerns that those which lead UNESCO to carry out safeguard campaigns for the monuments in Nubia, in Egypt, in Sudan, in Venice. But Fez is an unprecedented campaign by its very nature. It is the first time a campaign is undertook in favour of an Islamic city. The action to carry out constitute by its scope an example of the major challenges humanity has to take up to preserve and enhance her cultural heritage, facing the constraints of an accelerated modernisation and industrialisation process. Human abilities and imagination are up to this challenge. As a consequence, from the site of this earth that is par excellence the earth of human being and his quest for the Absolute, I solemnly call for international solidarity. I invite the UNESCO State Parties, the international organisations, be they governmental or not, the public and the private institutions, sponsor institutions and people from the various nations, to participate by volunteer contribution of any kind to the Campaign of Safeguard, Rehabilitation and Renewal of the City of Fez. I invite all the intellectuals, artists and writers, ulemas and jurists, historians and sociologists, as well as all those aiming to inform, journalists, columnists, professionals of press, radio, television, cinema, to contribute to rise the awareness of the audience in all the countries about the problems in Fes and to encourage it to contribute to the safeguard. It is my hope the contributions commensurate the huge works to be undertaken, and allow the preservation, for ever of one of the most harmonious urban environment created by human beings, as well as the preservation, for the happiness of those living in Fez and those who will visit her, of her collective soul which, since more than eleven centuries, has carried the most current massage: the solidarity and fraternity between all human beings.
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Abstract in French
Dans cette thèse, j'entends décrire et expliciter l'actualisation du patrimoine dans un site du patrimoine mondial. Suivant l'idée que le patrimoine est une qualité accordée aux choses par les êtres humains dans le contexte de leur relation avec ces choses, j'étudie le processus de qualification patrimoniale à l'œuvre dans la médina de Fès au Maroc. La théorie économiste postule qu'une qualité est allouée à une chose après l'entrée de cette dernière dans une économie, sur un marché, ou, à tout le moins, dans un système d'échange, dont des critères définissent les valeurs et qualités valables. Ainsi pourrait être dressée une liste des marchés à Fès, comprenant entre autres un marché symbolique dans lequel le patrimoine est un outil identitaire, un marché politique dont les acteurs instrumentalisent le patrimoine, un marché économique mettant le patrimoine au cœur du développement touristique, ou encore un marché social faisant du patrimoine une base de revendications en justice. Plutôt que de lister ces marchés et leurs qualités attenantes, j'ai centré mon attention sur un élément reconnu officiellement comme patrimoine, à savoir les maisons de la médina de Fès. Durant mon enquête de terrain, il est apparu que de nombreux habitants, marocains et étrangers, ne considèrent pas leur maison comme un patrimoine culturel. Les maisons avaient alors une autre histoire que celle de la patrimonialisation par les institutions et d'autres qualités que celle de patrimoine culturel. J'ai donc d'un côté suivi et décrit d'un côté les maisons et leurs réseaux, c'est à dire les différentes manières de s'engager avec ces maisons dans une histoire. D'un autre côté, je me suis intéressée au patrimoine et à sa trajectoire, à savoir la manière dont les maisons traversent la frontière patrimoniale (notion que je mets d'ailleurs en question) et dont les acteurs humains la dessinent. Cette double description me permet de penser le patrimoine culturel comme une forme, à savoir ce qui reste similaire à travers une succession de transformations et de circulations (Latour, 2012), ce qui circule entre et s'ancre dans de nombreuses situations. Si toutes les formes patrimoniales partagent des similitudes, que je définis comme la fiction patrimoniale, chaque forme a ses propres caractéristiques et critères de valuation. Après une première partie dédiée à Fès, je m'intéresse aux maisons et aux multiples manières de s'engager avec elles. Les travaux de restauration, la décoration et l'ameublement, la transformation des maisons en logement touristique, me permettent de décrire le quotidien de ces maisons et d'aborder la question de l'aveuglement des habitants qui ne voient pas la qualité patrimoniale de leur maison. Cette qualité décrite dans la troisième partie en même temps que 4 types de relations avec les maisons, à savoir les relations physiques, affectives, expertes, conflictuelles qui participent à la qualification des maisons. Il en ressort que le patrimoine est une qualité parmi d'autres accordée suite à un plus d'attention. Dans cette qualification patrimoniale, dont la notion d'attachement (Hennion, 1993, 2007) permet de rendre compte adéquatement. Aussi, les sens et les affects jouent un rôle non négligeable afin d'éveiller l'attention, le plus qui conduira à l'attribution d'une qualité patrimoniale. Enfin, cette qualité patrimoniale n'est pas propre aux maisons, mais concerne une multitude de formes patrimoniales. Par là, j'entends le patrimoine comme outil de développement dans les programmes de la Banque Mondiale, comme définition dans les conventions de l'Unesco, comme objet d'étude pour les anthropologues, comme label pour les promoteurs de la ville. Après avoir décrit ces différentes formes, j'en viens à ce qu'elles ont en commun, la fiction patrimoniale, et à la manière dont elles circulent et s'ancrent en situation.
La médina de Fès
Dans une première partie, je décris la médina de Fès, vaste zone piétione de plus de 300 hectares. Je présente l'histoire de cette ville fondée au 9 ème siècle et les trois transformations majeures qui y ont eu lieu depuis le milieu du 20 ème siècle. Il s'agit tout d'abord d'un changement en termes de population. Alors que la médina fut caractérisée par un mélange de populations (Arabes, Berbères, Juifs, Espagnols) jusqu'au début du Protectorat français en 1912, les élites
396 fassies ont quitté la médina après l'indépendance en 1957 et se sont installées dans la Ville Nouvelle, à Casablanca (le centre économique) et à Rabat (centre politique). Elles ont été remplacées par des migrants ruraux qui ont loué, voire squatté, leurs maisons (dans certaines maisons, une pièce peut être louée à une famille de 6 personnes). Les autorités publiques et certains chercheurs ont nommé ce changement de population "ruralisation" ou "foundoukisation" (El Faiz, 2002) et en ont fait la raison majeure de la dégradation physique et symbolique de la médina (Idrissi Janati, 2001). De fait, la médina est devenue un quartier marginal et marginalisé pour sa pauvreté et son insécurité, et bon nombre de ses maisons menacent de s'effondrer. Sur les 12.000 bâtisses (entre 11.400 et 14.700 selon la source) de la médina, près de 3.000 (entre 1.300 et 3.600 selon la source) sont en ruine. Cette double dégradation n'empêche pas des étrangers (majoritairement des Français, des Anglais, des Américains et des Australiens) d'acheter une maison en médina pour en faire leur résidence secondaire ou un logement touristique. Ces installations ont commencé à la fin des années 1990, soit 20 ans après les premières arrivées massives d'étrangers à Marrakech. Certaines politiques patrimoniales avaient déjà été mises en place avant l'inscription de la médina au patrimoine mondial de l'Unesco en 1981, second changement majeur que je décris. Les Habous (actuel Ministère des affaires religieuses) s'occupaient de biens collectifs ou individuels inaliénables mis au service de la communauté, et les sultans prenaient soin ou détruisaient les bâtiments construits par la dynastie précédente afin de faire valoir leur propre autorité. Néanmoins, les premières politiques patrimoniales ont été officialisées au début du Protectorat français (1912 1956). Le général résident Lyautey a initié des institutions (dont l'actuelle Inspection des Monuments historiques), des actions (comme la collecte d'objet artisanaux par le Département des Arts Indigènes) et des lois régissant le patrimoine culturel au Maroc. Les actions de ces institutions avaient cependant été minorées après l'Indépendance en 1957, le patrimoine culturel ne constituant alors pas un cheval de bataille du nouvel Etat marocain. L'inscription de la médina sur la liste du patrimoine mondial marque un regain d'intérêt pour le patrimoine de la médina et a entrainé de nombreuses études scientifiques, restaurations de bâtiments, création d'institutions et séjours d'experts et de consultants à Fès. Cependant, l'Unesco brille actuellement par son absence à Fès : il n'y a aucun bureau ni représentant de l'institution à Fès, et la majorité des habitants considèrent l'Unesco comme un "mythe" (Lahbil Tagemouati, 2001) dont ils ne connaissent rien ou comme un Sauveur apportant de l'argent à la médina, bien qu'ils critiquent également les détournements d'argent de la part des responsables politiques. Enfin, troisième transformation, le tourisme, bien que présent depuis la fin des années 1910, connaît un développement non négligeable. Les deux plans nationaux successifs, "Vision 2010" et "Vision 2020", visent à l'accueil d'un nombre de touristes sans cesse revu à la hausse (20 millions en 2020) et au développement d'infrastructures touristiques. Ces plans nationaux se déclinent au niveau régional en Programme Régional de Développement Touristique (PDRT). Ces Programmes régionaux sont censés encadrer le développement de logements touristiques. Par exemple, un programme de logement chez l'habitant, Ziyarates, a été inauguré en 2007 et propose maintenant des chambres dans une trentaine de familles marocaines logeant en médina. Aussi, l'Association des Maisons d'hôtes de Fès dénombrait 63 maisons d'hôtes officielles et 16 locations de meublé en décembre 2012, contre une centaine de logements touristiques informels.
Comment s'engager avec la matérialité des maisons?
Au vu du peu d'importance patrimoniale que les habitants, tant marocains qu'étrangers, accordent aux maisons, j'explore ce qu'est "habiter une maison dans un site du patrimoine mondial". J'ai pris ces maisons comme le centre de réseaux qui se croisent et qui constituent autant de manières de s'engager avec elles et leur matérialité. Je décris alors ce qui circule, se rencontre, passe par les maisons, toutes les relations, composantes et flux composant ces réseaux. Ces descriptions ethnographiques dessinent des frontières réelles mais floues et jamais définitives entre groupes d'acteurs (Marocains, étrangers membres d'institutions, élites marocaines).
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Je commence par présenter la maison nord africaine telle que décrite dans la littérature académique. Ces descriptions, pour la plupart ancrées dans le paradigme de la Ville Islamique, fixent les maisons dans un modèle unique, à savoir celui de la maison à patio central, et leur associent des caractéristiques spécifiques, telles une opposition entre l'ouvert et le fermé, l'intimité et l'hospitalité, le public et le privé, le masculin et le féminin. Cependant, la description de deux maisons à Fès, tant du point de vue architectural que des activités quotidiennes, montre la diversité des formes architecturales, des manières d'aménager l'intérieur et de négocier avec ces caractéristiques. L'acquisition d'une maison, qu'elle soit héritée, achetée, louée ou squattée, implique des travaux allant de l'entretien à la restauration complète en passant par la préservation aussi stricte que possible. D'une part, ces travaux, entrepris autant par des Marocains que par des étrangers, mobilisent certaines valeurs comme le respect de la maison ou l'authenticité/tradition. Mais en aucun cas le patrimoine n'est au cœur de la démarche, et bon nombre habitants visent avant tout à moderniser leur logement. D'autre part, ces travaux nécessitent pour la plupart l'obtention d'une autorisation (V1 s'il y a modification de la structure, V2 dans le cas contraire) à la commune. Cette dernière la délivre après qu'une commission (composée entre autre de la Sécurité Civile, de l'Agence Urbaine et des Monuments Historiques en plus de la commune) ait étudié le dossier dans le cas d'une V1, et surveille ensuite la réalisation des travaux. Dans le cas d'un logement touristique, deux autorisations supplémentaires sont à obtenir afin de pouvoir exercer légalement, la licence et le classement. Les habitants de leur côté ne demandent pas automatiquement une autorisation, pas plus qu'ils ne respectent les règles officielles. Etre illégal et être dans la norme ne se définissent pas pour autant simplement. A la fois les habitants et les membres des institutions (je m'intéresse principalement à la commune, à l'Agence de Développement et de Réhabilitation de la médina ou ADER, et à l'Inspection des Monuments Historiques) rusent avec les règles, ce qui occasionne de nombreux conflits entre eux. Pour ruser avec les règles, les habitants doivent connaître ces règles et la manière de faire les travaux. Ainsi, cette phase de travaux est souvent présentée par les étrangers comme un processus d'apprentissage et une expérience sociale forte. En plus d'effectuer des travaux, les habitants meublent et décorent leur maison. Aucune règle officielle n'est plus applicable, excepté dans le cas des logements touristiques dont les propriétaires doivent respecter une charte (Charte nationale des Maisons d'Hôtes, label Ziyarates). Les habitants suivent alors le désir des clients, leurs envies personnelles, leurs finances, leurs souvenirs ou meublent et décorent en fonction de raisons pratiques ou avec ce qu'ils ont chiné. Les maisons décorées et meublées rentrent ainsi dans un (ou plusieurs) des six styles d'aménagement intérieur, à savoir le style Arabo Andalou (le style spécifique de la ville), le style rural ou berbère, le style minimaliste, le style européen, le style marocain des élites et le style marocain familial. Les habitants réfèrent rarement à ces styles pour décrire leur maison, mais bien pour juger et évaluer les styles d'autres maisons. Le goût est alors au cœur de leurs jugements, et est assorti de critères comme l'harmonie, l'originalité, la beauté ou encore la typicité. Dans ce cadre, le goût est à la fois un descripteur de ce qui est jugé (un intérieur est "kitch" ou de "bon goût"), une compétence du propriétaire à aménager correctement et un marqueur de distinction entre étrangers et Marocains d'une part, mais aussi entre Marocains riches et pauvres d'autre part. Posséder un logement touristique peut également s'avérer être un marqueur de distinction, en permettant par exemple aux élites fassies, qui possèdent bon nombre de ces logements, de toujours être présentes en médina et d'être des élites de leur temps. Pourtant, ce sont plutôt les notions d'intimité, d'hospitalité et de tradition qui ont retenu mon attention. Avant d'être une fabrique de rêve et de faux, les logements touristiques posent des problèmes quotidiens. Ils mettent à mal l'intimité supposée des maisons d'Afrique du Nord en les ouvrant au monde, tant par les sites internet de promotion et autres média présentant ces maisons que par le passage fréquent de touristes dans la maison. Aussi, les propriétaires de ces logements protègent ils leur intimité en se réservant des pièces dans la maison ou, dans la plupart des cas, en ne vivant pas dans la maison afin de reproduire ce que Bachelard (1957) a présenté comme un petit nid assurant la sécurité ontologique de l'individu. L'hospitalité prend également une tournure différente dans les
398 logements touristiques. Si bon nombre de propriétaires la placent au centre de leurs relations quotidiennes avec les hôtes, cette hospitalité est payante. Les propriétaires développent des moyens en vue d'euphémiser la relation économique (en offrant le thé) tout en ne l'éliminant pas (les règlements intérieurs rappellent que le propriétaire n'est pas un ami). Enfin, les propriétaires de logements touristiques ont pour désir de présenter "le Maroc réel" aux touristes. La maison traditionnelle est alors adaptée au niveau de la fonction des pièces (les salons deviennent des chambres, la terrasse devient un lieu où prendre le petit déjeuner et bronzer) ou l'introduction de mobilier spécifique (climatiseurs, transat sur la terrasse, cuisine équipée). Pourtant, plus que de folklorisation (Kurzac Souali, 2007), d'authenticité mise en scène (MacCannell, 1973) ou d'invention de tradition (Hobsbawm et Ranger, 1983), les propriétaires suivent, tout comme les habitants en général, une épistémologie de la présupposition (Bizzochi, dans Fabre, 2009) basée sur leurs souvenirs, leurs désirs, et le passé tel qu'ils le voient. Si les habitants effectuent des travaux dans leur maison, la meublent et la décorent, ou en font un logement touristique, la maison agit également sur eux, ou du moins les fait agir. Il ne s'agit pas de plaider pour une symétrie entre humains et non humains en termes d'agency (Latour, 2007), mais, suivant Miller (2001) et Ingold (2007), de prendre en compte les conséquences de la matérialité. Ainsi, et c'est un quatrième type d'engagement avec les maisons, les habitants allouent une âme et une vie à leur maison, la rendant ainsi agissante et vivante. Pour certains, la maison est une amie qui choisit qui peut vivre dedans. D'autres déclarent voyager en rencontrant des touristes "du monde entier" dans leur maison ou s'évader grâce à la richesse et à la profondeur spirituelle de la décoration architecturale. D'autres encore sont reconnaissant de l'imagination et de la créativité que leur apporte leur maison, eux qui ont dessiné les plans, trouvé de nouvelles fonctions aux pièces, fabriqué les meubles ou encore écrit un livre sur leur expérience. Enfin, les membres d'institution, les élites marocaines et les étrangers dénient souvent l'engagement des habitants marocains avec leur maison en les accusant de ne pas savoir en prendre soin, de les laisser s'écrouler, de remplacer des mosaïques traditionnelles par des carrelages modernes. Cet aveuglement repose en partie sur des raisons économiques : les habitants marocains n'ont pas les moyens financiers de s'occuper correctement de leur maison, et ce malgré les programmes d'aide économiques proposés par l'ADER. L'aveuglement provient également d'une envie de quitter la médina pour s'établir en ville nouvelle, ainsi que du régime de propriété. Les locataires sont moins enclins à effectuer des travaux importants, tandis que les propriétaires qui louent rechignent à investir de l'argent dans des maisons qui leur rapportent peu. Ou encore, le manque d'intérêt pour les maisons est dû à un manque d'éducation à l'histoire, à l'art et au patrimoine. Dans ces discours, les étrangers, et dans une moindre mesure les élites, apparaissent comme les déclencheurs de la conscience architecturale patrimoniale à Fès. Pourtant, tout au long de cette partie dédiée aux maisons, j'ai montré comment les habitants, étrangers comme marocains, accordent de l'attention à leur maison. Bien entendu, la familiarité avec les maisons (Fabre, 2009) a souvent pour conséquence de centrer son attention et son intérêt sur leur quotidien et non sur leur dimension patrimoniale. Mais chacun trouve dans la maison une ou des affordances (Gibson, 1977) lui permettant de s'engager avec elle.
L'attachement aux maisons
Cette description des réseaux d'engagement passant par la maison n'explique ni pourquoi, ni comment certains habitants qualifient leur maison de patrimoine culturel. Gravari Barbas (2005) et Fabre (2009) étudient le quotidien de maisons patrimonialisées même si les habitants ne les considèrent pas comme telles. Pour ma part, je ne prends pas la qualité patrimoniale des maisons comme acquise suite à une patrimonialisation par le haut, (par l'Etat et par l'Unesco dans ce cas) et je me penche sur la manière dont une maison peut se voir attribuer la qualité de patrimoine par ses habitants. Il s'agit dès lors de s'intéresser aux relations que les habitants ont avec les maisons, non plus en termes de réseau d'acteurs, mais en termes de relations entre un nombre réduit d'acteurs.
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Les maisons sont un lieu de relations sensuelles. Les habitants les touchent, les voient, les sentent. Les étrangers mentionnent le coup de foudre ayant précédé l'achat de la maison, les touristes ont le souffle coupé en voyant la beauté du patio, les Marocains décrivent les odeurs d'encens envahissant la maison certains jours de fête. Certains informateurs font d'ailleurs de cette capacité à percevoir une compétence des habitants. En plus d'être une compétence, comme Ingold (2001) et Hennion (2007) l'ont montré, les sens impliquent de la réflexivité afin notamment de pouvoir mettre en mots ce qui est "aveuglément évident" au vu de son ubiquité. Les sens sont aussi liés à la mémoire, tant dans les souvenirs que les sens évoquent à la mémoire que dans le processus d'acquisition des sens par des expériences répétées. Les affects, en tant qu'états d'esprit liés au plaisir ou au déplaisir, à l'attraction ou à la répulsion d'une chose, personne ou situation, sont également liés à la mémoire. Ils préservent des traces du passé qu'ils apportent dans le présent comme ressources potentielles (Mazzarella, 2009). Ainsi, les affects peuvent intervenir dans les actions et les prises de décision (Kals et al., 1999), et relèvent de la capacité à affecter et à être affecté (Navaro Yashin, 2009). Les affects ne sont donc pas purement biologiques ni sociaux ou culturels, mais, comme certains chercheurs travaillant sur les émotions patrimoniales l'ont montré (Fabre, 2002; Dassié, 2006), émergent en situation. L'intimisation (Dassié, id.) d'événements ou d'objets (leur inclusion dans la trajectoire personnelle) se mêle à leur politisation (Barbe et Tornatore, 2006) pour potentiellement engendrer une action collective. Par contre, il serait fallacieux de prendre les affects comme marqueur de distinction entre experts et non experts, à l'instar d'Heinich (2009), ou entre Marocains et étrangers. Une typologie des affects, et notamment la distinction entre 'affects socio biographiques et affects esthético historiques (Etienne, 2006), ne permet pas de dessiner de frontière claire entre catégories d'acteurs. Tous ressentent des affects d'un ou de plusieurs types. La majorité des habitants mentionne le bien être ressenti dans leur maison, le sentiment de sécurité, de paix et de calme. Ce bien être provient de l'harmonie architecturale de la maison, de son atmosphère, ou d'une pièce particulière. Ces mêmes éléments peuvent provoquer un sentiment de malaise dans une maison trop haute ou trop sombre par exemple. Certains habitants ressentent du respect et de l'humilité à vivre dans un environnement leur rappelant sans cesse la finitude de l'être humain en même temps que son génie créateur, ou la puissance de Dieu. Les étrangers principalement font part de leur tristesse ou de leur déception suite à des travaux trop coûteux en temps, en argent et en énergie. Les Marocains quant à eux relient la maison à la crise économique des années 1980 et aux privations qui en ont suivi. D'autres sont nostalgiques de leur enfance dans la maison familiale et évoquent leurs souvenirs. Enfin, l'approche des maisons par les membres des institutions en termes de catégorie peut laisser penser qu'ils ne ressentent aucun affect. Pourtant, le dépassement du discours professionnel permet de mettre à jour des affects relatifs à la pratique du métier (avoir peur que Fès n'aille sur la liste du patrimoine mondial en péril) et à l'enfance passée en médina. Un troisième type de relation avec les maisons est la relation experte, dont l'investigation à Fès invite à repousser une approche en termes de simple opposition entre experts et non experts. Les experts à Fès sont de plusieurs sortes, allant des experts culturels (guides touristiques, membres de l'Inspection des Monuments Historiques) aux membres d'institutions en charge de la médina (commune, architectes, ADER) en passant par les étrangers appelés dans le cadre d'un projet de restauration international. Les quelques 280.000 habitants de la médina constituent quant à eux les non experts. Pourtant, une catégorie d'experts autodidactes, ou amateurs, est à insérer entre experts et non experts. Les autodidactes ont acquis, par leur vie dans la médina et leurs lectures, certaines connaissances et ont développé un savoir qui n'est cependant pas reconnu officiellement. Il s'agit notamment des propriétaires de logement touristique, des intellectuels actifs dans la préservation de la médina, et des étrangers dirigeant une entreprise de restauration. Ainsi, plus qu'une profession, un statut ou un type de connaissance, l'expertise est une capacité revendiquée de parler au nom de (Trepos, 2002; Tornatore, 2010) dans le cadre d'une relation d'attention avec une chose. Plus que d'être opposés en tous points, experts, non experts et experts autodidactes partagent des sens, des affects. Ils parlent également de la médina et des maisons en
400 référant à des métaphores corporelles, tout comme ils développent des connaissances sur les maisons et la médina, que ce soit sous forme d'anecdotes et de souvenirs, de discours synthétiques, de blogs, de livres ou de normes. Ainsi, c'est l'attention donnée à la maison et la formalisation de la connaissance liée à cette attention qui caractérise l'expert. Au plus une connaissance est stabilisée dans des formes écrites, au plus elle peut circuler sans subir de transformation majeure. Cette stabilisation est corrélée avec une mise à distance des affects, et un engagement en critique avec l'objet d'attention. Des relations conflictuelles émergent autour de la maison entre habitants et ouvriers et/ou habitants et membres d'institutions durant les travaux, entre voisins, ou encore entre membres d'institutions. Ces conflits, loin de constituer un évènement quotidien, doivent être considérés par le chercheur comme un moyen d'enquête pour accéder aux justifications des acteurs humains. En effet, des conventions fournissent un cadre de justification au cours d'épreuves et de disputes en justice (Boltanski et Thévenot, 1991). L'exemple du remplacement des portes d'entrée en bois par des portes en métal donne à voir de nombreuses intervenant également dans d'autres conflits et disputes. Il s'agit de justifications sécuritaires (les portes en métal sont plus résistantes), économiques (les portes en métal coûtent moins cher), pratiques et fonctionnelles (les portes en métal sont plus faciles au maniement), esthétiques (les portes en métal ne sont pas belles), légales (les règles n'interdisent pas ce remplacement), techniques (placer une porte en métal demande moins de main d'œuvre), de préservation (les portes en métal ne sont pas traditionnelles), ou de jalousie (imiter un voisin ayant installé une porte en métal). Le tourisme, les souvenirs et habitudes ou au contraire la mode, la solidarité, l'éducation sont d'autres justifications mobilisées par les habitants. Ces justifications permettent de mettre à jour des conventions auxquelles se réfèrent les acteurs humains (règles officielles, beauté), les actions qu'ils mènent en relation avec leur maison (ils entretiennent les maisons, les instrumentalisent à des fins touristiques, les préservent et les transmettent), et ce à quoi ils tiennent. Ce à quoi les habitants tiennent se (re)marque aussi dans les qualités qu'ils allouent à leur maison. La qualification, notion importante dans la sociologie du travail et de l'économie (Callon et al., 2002) et dans la sociologie de l'art (Michaud, 1999; Shapiro et Heinich, 2012), est ici définie comme l'appréciation ou dépréciation de choses, d'humains ou d'évènements. Cette épreuve résulte en une individualisation de ce qui est valué par l'attribution de qualités valeurs, qui ne sont ni intrinsèques ni définitives (James, 1976). A Fès, les habitants mentionnent les qualités physiques et architecturales de leur maison (la fraicheur en été et le froid en hiver, l'épaisseur des murs, la taille du patio, les mauvaises odeurs, l'humidité), la vie de la maison (la maison possède une âme, est morte quand elle n'est plus habitée), la beauté (la vue imprenable depuis la terrasse, l'harmonie du patio), la spiritualité (la décoration architecturale rappelle Dieu, la fontaine est avant tout utile aux ablutions), l'exceptionnalité (la maison est unique au vu de sa décoration architecturale ou de son histoire), la représentativité (la maison représente le style Arabo Andalou, la culture marocaine ou le mode de vie fassi), la qualité économique (la maison rapporte de l'argent en tant que logement touristique, mais toute maison coûte de l'argent à l'entretien), la fonctionnalité et le confort (les maisons sont avant tout un lieu de vie), l'âge de la maison (la maison est récente et il n'y a rien à dire ou la maison est vieille mais on ne connaît que peu son histoire), l'authenticité et l'aspect traditionnel (dans son architecture, sa décoration ou son mode de vie), et la qualité patrimoniale (la maison est un patrimoine familial, économique ou culturel). Cette approche de la qualification permet de dépasser les débats sur la frontière patrimoniale. Théoriquement, une chose passe une frontière et est incluse dans un territoire et un seul. Dès lors, il ne peut qu'émerger des conflits au vu de l'inscription réelle de la chose dans plusieurs territoires. Plus qu'un objet qui passe une frontière, le patrimoine est un objet frontière (Tornatore, 2000). De fait, les habitants accordent une multitude de qualités à leur maison, ces qualités n'étant pas mutuellement exclusives. La maison offre de multiples prises que les habitants, dans leur relation avec cette dernière, qualifient et transforment en attachements. Dans ce processus de qualification, la qualité patrimoniale est souvent associée à d'autres qualités, comme l'exceptionnalité, l'âge ou la représentativité.
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Au delà des régimes d'engagement (Thévenot, 2006), prenant principalement en compte les acteurs humains et leurs actions, la notion d'attachement (Hennion, 2007) met l'accent sur les relations entre les composantes d'une situation. L'intérêt va donc à l'expérience, au corps qui ressent, expérience et qualifie, à l'objet qui présente des prises et attire l'attention, aux collectifs (institutions, associations, relations) et aux dispositifs (conventions, règles) qui (en)cadrent l'expérience. La notion d'attachement permet alors de donner de la place aux sens et aux affects dans l'expérience d'une situation. Ces sens et affects montrent ce à quoi tiennent les acteurs humains, quels sont leurs objets d'attention, et participent à l'intimisation (Dasié, 2006) ou appropriation (Miller, 1988) de ces objets. Ils jouent donc un rôle dans la qualification d'un objet comme patrimoine. Le sentiment de perte, la nostalgie, l'empathie, initient des démarches d'apprentissage et de développement des connaissances tout comme elles sont fédératrices dans le cadre de la mobilisation patrimoniale. Ainsi, au delà des aspects techniques, économiques et politiques, les projets de restauration d'un élément du patrimoine se doivent de tenir compte des sens et affects, qui en plus d'être essentiels dans les relations quotidiennes à l'élément de patrimoine, rassemblent les experts, les non experts et les autodidactes. Il va sans dire que s'ils sont nécessaires pour créer un attachement patrimonial à un objet, les sens et les affects peuvent ne pas être suffisants. Les qualités, justifications et actions interviennent également dans la qualification patrimoniale et sont, comme les sens et affects, une composante possible de la qualification patrimoniale. Ces composantes possibles permettent de sortir d'une définition essentialiste du patrimoine et de mettre en évidence le continuum entre les maisons et le patrimoine. Tous les deux proposent des expériences sensuelles et affectives aux acteurs humains et partagent des qualités de vie, d'âge, d'économie ou encore de spiritualité. Ainsi, la maison comme habitation n'exclut pas la maison comme patrimoine. La différence entre les deux est un petit plus d'attention donné à la maison et que la maison attire afin de la qualifier de patrimoine. Ce petit plus provient généralement de la concaténation d'affects liés à la perte, à la disparition et à la nostalgie, de qualités liées au temps (tradition, âge), à l'authenticité et à l'objet (rareté, typicité), et à des actions de préservation et de transmission.
Fiction patrimoniale
Après m'être intéressée à l'actualisation du patrimoine en prenant comme exemple les maisons de la médina de Fès, j'aborde dans une dernière partie les multiples formes de patrimoines rencontrés, ou les multiples manières dont le mot "patrimoine" prend un contenu à Fès. En effet, en plus de l'objet quotidien que sont les maisons, le patrimoine est aussi présent sous forme d'objet à préserver (pour l'Inspection des Monuments Historiques), de définition et catégorie (avec la Convention du patrimoine mondial et les lois nationales), de label (dans le cadre de la promotion touristique de la ville), d'outil de développement (avec les projets de restauration de la Banque Mondiale), d'objet d'étude (avec la présence de chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales). J'avance qu'il est plus pertinent d'aborder cette multiplicité de patrimoines en termes de formes (et de répertoire de formes) qu'en termes de valeurs ou de définitions. Cette dernière approche ne mène souvent qu'à des assertions d'un patrimoine foncièrement conflictuel et dissonant (Tunbridge et Ashworsh, 1996) ou à l'aveu d'une définition impossible du patrimoine (Lowenthal, 1998, Smith, 2006). A la différence, la notion de forme laisse une certaine liberté de contenu des éléments du patrimoine tout en leur offrant un cadre précis. Une forme est ce qui reste similaire à travers une série de transformations et de circulations. Ainsi, le patrimoine comme label est reconnaissable en tant que tel dans de multiples situations, dans diverses localisations où il est instrumentalisé différemment. Ces différentes formes du patrimoine ont donc chacune leur trajectoire, leurs caractéristiques de fonctionnement et conditions de véridicité, et il est fallacieux d'utiliser pour juger une autre forme même si elles se croisent. Ces formes partagent également des caractéristiques de la fiction patrimoniale dont elles sont une catégorie. Le patrimoine est en effet une fiction, à savoir une construction qui possède une histoire. Une fiction n'est pas une illusion ou une fantaisie n'existant que dans l'imagination, mais est réelle
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(Ricoeur, 2001), est un espace commun où prennent place des relations, actions, affects, sens (Hennion et Vidal Naquet, 2012), qui à la fois s'impose aux humains (ils respectent la définition et les catégories de patrimoine) et a besoin d'eux pour exister et se reproduire (Latour, 2012). Ainsi, dans la fiction patrimoniale se retrouvent les similitudes partagées par toutes les formes de patrimoine, à savoir une relation spécifique au passé (le temps est linéaire et ce qui appartient au passé disparaît s'il n'est pas préservé), une définition de la Nature et de la Culture comme des entités de fait et distinctes, une importance de l'expertise et des experts, des propos moraux et éthiques (favoriser la paix et le consensus). Cette fiction patrimoniale, tout comme les formes, circule entre et se localise dans des situations. La partie de cette thèse dédiée à l'attachement montre comment s'effectue l'ancrage en situation par la qualification. A l'inverse, les médias sont un dispositif de circulation. Ainsi, des films documentaires, des films amateurs postés sur Youtube, des articles dans des magasines, des livres, présentent Fès et ses patrimoines au delà de Fès, les faisant entrer dans le global. En effet, cette dialectique d'ancrage et de circulation permet d'interroger le couple classique du local et du global (Marcus; 1995; Wilk, 1995; Appadurai, 1996; Wallerstein, 2004). Plus que des échelles, le local et le global sont des qualités (Collier et Ong, 2005), de ce qui est formalisé et circule intensément pour le global, et de ce qui s'ancre et se localise en situation pour le local. Les formes patrimoniales facilement visualisables et stabilisées (le dossier écrit de nomination de la médina au patrimoine mondial ou les films documentaires) sont donc plus globales que les formes ancrées en situation (tel palais de la médina). Suivant cette idée, l'Unesco n'est pas une machine impérialiste imposant sa grammaire globale au monde entier (Turtinen, 2000), mais un macro acteur assis sur de nombreuses boites noires (Latour, 1985) et ayant créé de nombreuses associations avec des acteurs plus petits.
Conclusion
La médina de Fès et ses maisons, bien que classées au patrimoine mondial de l'Unesco, ne sont pas nécessairement considérées comme patrimoine par les habitants. Les maisons y sont aussi autre chose que du patrimoine. Leur investigation en tant que centre de croisement de réseaux d'engagement montre que les habitants entreprennent des travaux (d'entretien, de restauration, de préservation), meublent et décorent les maisons, en font des logements touristiques, leur attribuent un pouvoir d'action. Ainsi, l'aveuglement des habitants envers leur maison et les compétences que les élites marocaines, les membres d'institution et les étrangers dénient aux habitants marocains, proviennent de problèmes économiques (utiliser des matériaux et des techniques traditionnels coute cher), d'une envie des habitants de quitter la médina pour s'établir en ville nouvelle, et d'une familiarisation avec les maisons mettant les problèmes quotidiens au devant des considérations patrimoniales (la maison est avant tout un lieu de vie). Cependant, les maisons sont aussi qualifiées de patrimoine familial, économique ou culturel par les habitants. Ces derniers expériencent des relations affectives et sensuelles avec les maisons, des relations d'expertise, des relations conflictuelles, et en viennent à qualifier leur maison, entre autres, de fonctionnelle, de spirituelle, de vieille, et de patrimoine. Le patrimoine n'est donc qu'une qualité parmi d'autres dans le processus de qualification. Les sens et affects ne sont pas à négliger dans ce processus, comme ils montrent ce à quoi un individu tient. Ils sont, au même titre que les qualités, les justifications et les actions, des composantes possibles (mais non nécessaires) de la qualification patrimoniale. Ces composantes permettent à la fois de souligner la continuité entre les maisons et le patrimoine (qui partagent certaines de ces composantes), et leur différence. Le patrimoine est en effet lié à des affects de perte et de nostalgie, à des qualités temporelles, d'authenticité et matérielles, et à des actions et justifications de préservation et de transmission. Ce patrimoine est pourtant multiple, comme les diverses formes de patrimoine présentes à Fès le montrent. Le patrimoine est un objet quotidien, mais aussi un label, un outil de développement, une définition et une catégorie, un objet de recherche. Ces formes, bien qu'ayant
403 leur trajectoire et conditions de véridicité, partagent les caractéristiques de la fiction patrimoniale, à savoir une relation spécifique au passé, une définition de la Culture et de la Nature comme des entités spécifiques, une importance de l'expertise et des experts, et un discours moral et éthique. Cette fiction, ainsi que les formes, circulent entre et s'ancrent en situation. Si la partie concernant l'attachement exemplifiait l'ancrage par qualification, les médias constituent un dispositif de circulation de la fiction patrimoniale et de ses formes. Ainsi, le global et le local ne sont plus des échelles d'analyse mais des qualités de ce qui circule intensément et de ce qui se localise en situation. Au final, cette investigation du patrimoine à Fès a permis de monter que la notion d'attachement est aussi, voire plus pertinente que celle de frontière patrimoniale afin d'étudier la patrimonialisation, que le patrimoine provient d'un plus d'attention accordé par un acteur humain à une chose qui capte son attention, que chaque forme de patrimoine est caractérisée par une trajectoire spécifique, et que ces trajectoires se recoupent dans la fiction patrimoniale actuelle.
404