Why don't riads have windows?

A riad faces inward. Light, air, and sky enter from the open courtyard at the centre, and every room hangs off that void. Outward windows would defeat the design. The Arabic riyad means garden; the garden is the orientation. The street is only where the door happens to be.

There is also the principle of hurma — the inviolability of the household. Classical Maliki jurisprudence, which has governed Moroccan cities since the Almoravids in the 11th century, treats a sight-line into a neighbour's interior as a real harm. No window may look down onto another roof. No balcony may face another door. The blank wall to the derb isn't shyness, it's law. When upper-floor windows do exist, they're screened by moucharabieh — carved wooden lattice that lets the woman inside see out without letting the man outside see in.

Climate finishes the argument. The derbs are one to two metres wide, deliberately narrow for shade. Outside in July it's 45°C of dust, donkeys, motorbikes, and the goldsmith's hammer three doors down. Windows onto that would let in heat, noise, and the smell of the tannery. The blank wall keeps all of it out. The riad you wake up in is silent because the architecture is doing its job.