Wahid Hasyim

He was the son of Nahdlatul Ulama founder Hasyim Asy'ari and went on to lead the organization. In the future his son, Abdurrahman Wahid, also held the same office in NU, and later was elected as 4th President of Indonesia in 1999.

One of the main roads in central Jakarta, Jalan Wahid Hasyim, is named after him.

Early life

Wahid was born in 1914 as a child of Hasyim Asy'ari and one of his wives, Nafiqoh. Both Asy’ari and Nafiqoh hailed from ulema families in East Java. Wahid is Asy'ari's first-born male and his fifth child. He spent most of his childhood in Jombang, which included attending a pesantren that his father founded, Pesantren Tebuireng. By 1926, he had finished his schooling in Tebuireng and spent two years continuing his education in various East Java pesantren as was the tradition at the time.

Following his hajj pilgrimage in 1932 with one his cousins, Muhammad Ilyas, Wahid spent two more years in Saudi Arabia to further his study of Islamic hadith and fiqh. On returning to Jombang, he made several education reforms to the pesantren his father owns, including incorporating a general education system alongside the Islamic one. His experience in Saudi Arabia also led him to start learning foreign languages, such as English, German, and Dutch.