Biographical Sketch of the Nyais

From the main case study of Pesantren Seblak, I have chosen three nyais from three different generations; starting with Nyai Khoiriyah (the first generation), Nyai Abidah (the second generation) and Nyai Mahshunah (the third generation). Nyai Khoiriyah and her husband founded the pesantren. Nyai Abidah is Nyai Khoiriyah's daughter, while Nyai Mahshunah came from Pesantren Darul Ulum and married the grandson of Nyai Khoiriyah and moved to Pesantren Seblak. These facts suggest that nyais, either in their pesantren of origin or their ‘adopted pesantren’, have similar opportunities to be as influential as their male counterparts, particularly if they have leadership skills, management abilities and relevant religious knowledge.

Nyai Khoiriyah

Nyai Khoiriyah was born in 1906. She was the second child from the marriage of Kiai Hasyim Asy’ary to Nyai Nafiqah. Both her parents were believed to be the descendants of a sixteenth-century Javanese king, namely Brawijaya. She grew up in a period when there was no extensive public education, either religious or secular, available for women, despite some limited basic schools that were founded by the Dutch as part of their ethical policy for the native people, or some limited educational access in Western Dutch education that was also offered to the children of upper-class, aristocratic Javanese background, including the daughters. Those Dutch schools were not very popular and were not ‘accepted’ among the pesantren or santri community. This is due to pesantren antipathy to the Dutch colonial powers in Indonesia. Since there was no pesantren education for girls, then some kiais taught their daughters at home at that time.

Little Khoiriyah had a private education on Islamic sciences from her father, Kiai Hasyim Asy’ary. The pesantren world has a principle under which women and men should not intermingle; Khoiriyah was educated by her father using this principle. Kiai Hasyim Asy’ary did not place his daughter in his halaqah (a group of students which resembles a class) or allow her to mix with his male students. In his short article on Nyai Khoiriyah, Zuhdy mentioned that Nyai Khoiriyah followed the lessons from her father where she sat behind a curtain so that she did not intermingle with her male counterparts.