Hasyim Asy'ari

Muhammad Hasyim Asy'ari (1287-1366 AH / 1871-1947 CE) was an Indonesian Islamic scholar and the founder of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic organization in the world with tens of millions of members, primarily in Indonesia. Born in Jombang, East Java, into a family of pesantren scholars, he received his early education in Java before traveling to Mecca to study for several years.

In Mecca, he studied under major Hadrami Shafi'i scholars including Shaykh Ahmad Khatib al-Minangkabawi and Abu Bakr Syata. He mastered Shafi'i jurisprudence, hadith, and Arabic sciences, and returned to Java thoroughly grounded in the traditional Islamic scholarly curriculum of Southeast Asia.

He founded the pesantren Tebuireng in Jombang in 1899, which became one of the most important centers of Islamic learning in Indonesia. In 1926, he co-founded Nahdlatul Ulama (The Revival of the Scholars), an organization created partly in response to the modernist Muhammadiyah and partly to defend the traditional Shafi'i-Ash'ari-Sufi practices of Indonesian Muslims. NU quickly became a mass organization with enormous influence in Indonesian religious and political life.

His theological works include Risalah Ahl as-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah, defending traditional Sunni practices, and numerous treatises on jurisprudence and hadith. He was an active opponent of Dutch colonialism and played a role in the Indonesian national independence movement. He passed away in Jombang in 1947 and is revered as a major national figure in Indonesia.