Meunasah (from Arabic madrasah, via Malay surau) was the village chapel of Acheh, the communal building at the heart of every gampong. It served multiple functions simultaneously — a sleeping-place for men, a rest-house for strangers, a house of prayer, and a place of assembly for village affairs.
Functions
Religious: The meunasah was where the village held daily prayers (the Friday midday service requiring a larger meusigit — a proper mosque — if sufficient worshippers could be assembled). It housed the furniture needed for religious litanies (ratébs), including kettledrums (rapa’i or rapana) and wooden rings known as pulèt. A large lamp (kandé) was lit on the nights of the fasting month.
Social and political: The affairs of the gampong were debated in the meunasah. Village festivals were held in its courtyard, kanduris (religious feasts) organized, and marriage contracts concluded. A person of rank arriving unexpectedly would go first to the meunasah and announce his arrival from there.
Accommodation: It served as the regular sleeping place for the men of the gampong — since in Acehnese domestic custom the husband typically slept away from his wife’s house during most of his marriage. Strangers passing through were housed there.
Physical Description
The meunasah was generally a wooden building on posts. Some were built not on posts but on a raised stone foundation finished on top with cement, with stone stairs giving access. Such more imposing stone structures were called déah (from Arabic zāwiyah). The building contained a masonry niche (mehrab or merab) to indicate the direction of Mecca. Its courtyard was sometimes surrounded by a low stone wall.
Where the Headless Village
Where the heads of the village were not both pious and watchful, the meunasah was apt to become the scene of all manner of Acehnese iniquities. In its courtyard fights of cocks and other fighting birds were held; within the building gambling went on and other vice was shamefully practised at night.
Additional account from De Islaam in Indonesië (1947) — the rangkang
The meunasah is also known in Atjeh by the alternative name rangkang (in Mellema’s spelling also rangkng), recorded by R. L. Mellema in his comparative ethnological survey De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java) (Amsterdam, 1947). Mellema introduces the term in his chapter on Godsdienstonderwijs in Indonesië (religious education in Indonesia), where he describes the trajectory of the haddji — the pilgrim returned from Mecca — who, having spent some years in the holy city in the study of the law and the faith, might settle as goeroe (religious teacher) and give elementary instruction in the village prayer-house. He then enumerates the regional names of that building across the archipelago:
“in midden-Java langgar geheten, in Soenda ‘tajjeg’ in midden-Sumatra ‘soerau’ en in Atjeh bekend als ‘meunasah’ of ‘rangkng’.”
That is: in middle-Java called langgar, in Soenda tajjeg, in middle-Sumatra soerau, and in Atjeh known as meunasah or rangkang. The double naming in Atjeh — meunasah and rangkang — suggests either a regional variation within Atjeh or a functional distinction (the building as chapel versus the building as school) that Mellema does not further elaborate.
Mellema notes that all buildings of this class — langgar, tajjeg, soerau, meunasah, rangkang — are recognisable by “het spitte, gestapelde dak” (the steep, tiered roof), the characteristic stacked-roof form that Mellema, earlier in the survey, traces back to the pre-Islamic Indonesian community-house (the balai or bale). The rangkang thus shares with the meunasah the architectural lineage that connects the village prayer-house to the older Indonesian tradition of the piled, tiered-roof communal building. The comparative enumeration is the Mellema-source counterpart to Snouck Hurgronje’s monographic account of the meunasah in De Atjehers (1893–1894), and it furnishes the alternative name rangkang that Snouck’s monograph does not foreground.
Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)
On 26 January 1905 the patrol of sergeant Vollaers, seventeen men, was surprised in the meunasah of Meurandéh Paja east of Lho’ Soekon, where it had neglected all security measures; sixteen men were killed and only one native fusilier escaped. On 24 September 1910 sergeant Slooten heard from an Acehnese woman that three of Pang Nanggròë’s men were under the meunasah of gampong Aloeë with two women. In 1916 a redactor of the Deli Courant noted that when H. N. A. Swart observed in a gampong that a dilapidated meunasah did not do the village credit, the population did not build a new one but simply demolished the old.
See Also
- Gampong
- Mukim
- Meusigit
- Keuchi’
- Teungku
- Kanduri
- Rateb Saman
- Rangkang
- De Islaam in Indonesië (Mellema, 1947)
- R. L. Mellema
- Haddji title prestige in Atjeh (Mellema 1947)
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- 1947
- H. N. A. Swart
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Each village has a meunasah, with a big drum for the five daily prayers. Less used as a prayer house, more as a place for men to gather in the evening to discuss news. In former years hosted cock-fights with gambling. Functions as a village club, lodging for unmarried visiting men, meeting place for special occasions, place to conclude marriage contracts, and venue for partial Quran instruction for boys.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 166.
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906. Chapter I, §§ 5–6, pp. 58–80.
De Islaam in Indonesië (in het bijzonder op Java), by Drs. R. L. Mellema. Mededeling No. LXXVII, Afd. Volkenkunde No. 25. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Vereniging “Indisch Instituut,” 1947. “Godsdienstonderwijs in Indonesië,” p. 39; and Register, s.v. meunasah and rangkang.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter X, XVI.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 366.