The Meuapet is the Achehnese popular name for the eleventh month of the Mohammedan year, Du’l-qaʽdah. As C. Snouck Hurgronje records in his calendar of Achehnese months, the name Meuapet means “pinched, shut in,” and is to be compared with the Malay, Javanese and Sundanese apit or hapit — words of similar form signifying “to pinch” or “to shut in.” Less commonly the month is also called Doy Ka’idah, a direct Achehnese rendering of the Arabic Du’l-qaʽdah. The month stands between Shawwal (called in Achehnese Uròë Raya, the “feasting month,” or Chawöy) and Du’l-hijjah (called Haji or Doy Haji), and thus occupies the position in the calendar immediately before the great pilgrimage month.
The name Meuapet is one of the few Achehnese month-names which is not derived from a kanduri or religious offering characteristic of the month, and in this respect it forms a contrast with the preceding months of the year — Mo’lot (Rabiʽ al-awwal), Kanduri boh kayeu (Jumada al-akhir), Kanduri Apam (Rajab), Kanduri Bu (Shaʽban), Puasa (Ramadhan) — each of which takes its name from the offering by which it is marked. The reason for the absence of a kanduri-name in Meuapet is presumably the absence of any distinctive offering in this month. The Mohammedan year having reached its close, the Achehnese, like other Muslims of the archipelago, are by this time absorbed in the preparations for the great pilgrimage of the following month, and the devotional attention which in earlier months is given to the local kanduris is now directed toward the approaching Ḥajj.
The descriptive sense of the name Meuapet — “pinched, shut in” — is obscure, and Hurgronje does not attempt an explanation. It is possible that the name refers to the closing-in of the year, the sense that the months have now contracted toward their end; or it may refer to the confinement of those who, having taken the iḥrām (the pilgrim’s consecration), are bound by its prohibitions during this the month immediately preceding the Ḥajj. The month of Du’l-qaʽdah is, in any case, one of the four “sacred months” of the Islamic calendar — months in which warfare is forbidden — and the name Meuapet may thus reflect a popular sense of the constrained and bounded character of the season.
Meuapet stands at the end of the long succession of kanduri-months which begins with Mo’lot in the early spring of the Mohammedan year, and is followed by the Haji month of Du’l-hijjah, in which the great Feast of Sacrifices is celebrated. The absence of a distinctive kanduri in Meuapet is, in this sense, the calm before the storm: the month in which the Achehnese, having passed through the round of fruits, cakes, rice, and fasts which mark the earlier months, prepare for the great sacrificial feast which closes the year. The very name Meuapet — “pinched, shut in” — thus aptly describes a month in which the devotional life of the Achehnese is, for once, marked more by restraint than by offering.
See Also
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.