The Urbʾe Raya — literally “great feast-month” — is the Achehnese name for the Arabic month of Shawwāl (Syawal), the tenth month of the Mohammedan year, which immediately follows the fasting month of Ramadhan. It is the month of the great feast of the breaking of the fast (Achehnese Hari Raya Puasa; Arabic ʿĪd al-Fiṭr), and is so called because throughout its first days the Achehnese abandon themselves to the feasting, visiting, and merry-making from which they have abstained during the previous month of daylight fasting. The alternative Achehnese name for the month is Chawal, a simple phonetic adaptation of the Arabic Syawal.
Place in the Achehnese calendar
In the calendar of Achehnese months set out by Snouck Hurgronje, Urbʾe Raya occupies the tenth place, between Ramadhan — Puasa (the fast) or Kamalang or Ramalhan — and Duʾl-qaʿdah, called in Achehnese Meuapét (“pinched, shut in”; cf. apit or hapit in Malay, Javanese, and Sundanese) or Doy Kaʾidah. The full sequence of Achehnese month-names, with the Arabic equivalents, is as follows:
- Muharram — Kanduri Apam or Asura (cf. ʿAshura)
- Ṣafar — Kanduri Bu or Safar
- Rabīʿ al-awwal — Meuʾeud or Mauluʾ
- Rabīʿ al-ākhir — Meuʾeud Akhé
- Jumādā l-awwal — Meuʾlot Seumeulheuet
- Jumādā l-ākhir — Kanduri boh kayè
- Rajab — Kanduri Apam or Raʾjab
- Shaʿbān — Kanduri Bu or Chaʾban
- Ramaḍān — Puasa or Kamalang or Ramalhan
- Shawwāl — Urbʾe Raya (feasting month) or Chawal
- Dū l-qaʿdah — Meuapét or Doy Kaʾidah
- Dū l-ḥijjah — Haji or Doy Hijah
The month of feasting
The name “feasting month” reflects the dominant popular character of Shawwāl in Acheh. The first day of the month is the great feast of the breaking of the fast, on which the pitrah is paid to the teungku and the entire community turns out in new clothes to visit the graves of its dead and to exchange formal calls. Throughout the days that follow, the restraint of Ramadhan continues to be relaxed: feasts are given, visits exchanged, and the religious exercises of the fasting month — including the traweh service and the meudaroih or Quran recitation — are suspended until the next year. The traweh recitations and the noisy gatherings of the meunasah give way to the more social and convivial life of the household and the marketplace.
Religious and social significance
Although the Mohammedan law prescribes no fast for Shawwāl as a whole, popular piety in many parts of the Mohammedan world — and especially in the East Indian archipelago — commends a voluntary fast of six days during the month, on the authority of a tradition of the Prophet. Snouck Hurgronje does not single out this practice for special notice in Acheh, where the dominant note of the month is rather one of relief and festivity than of supplementary austerity. The month is, in any case, the time at which the religious life of the gampong returns to its ordinary round; the great lamp (kande) of the meunasah, which had been lit only on the nights of the fasting month, is again extinguished, and the teungku resumes his ordinary ministrations to the sick, the children, and the households of the village.
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.