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Kiai Haji Mahfudz Tremas (Maḥfūẓ b. ʿAbdallāh al-Tarmasī al-Jāwī, d. 1920) was one of the most respected Javanese scholars of his generation and probably the most influential. Born into a family of ʿulamāʾ (Muslim religious scholars) in Tremas (Pacitan district, East Java), he spent most of his adult life in Mecca, studying with the major scholars of his day and later teaching numerous students, mostly from Java. Most of the men who came to lead major pesantrens (religious boarding schools) in Java in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had studied at least one or two kitabs (…

Kitab kuning , “yellow books,” is the name by which the Arabic textbooks and works of reference studied in Indonesian pesantren, Islamic religious boarding schools, are commonly known. Occasionally, the Arabic equivalent, al-kutub al-ṣufrā, is also used. The origin of the term is not entirely clear, but it probably refers to the colour and quality of the paper of cheap Egyptian mass-produced prints. By extension, the term also refers to the entire curriculum and the didactic methods of the traditional pesantren, especially as contrasted with that of reformist Muslim schools…

KH. (Kiai Haji) Kholil (Muḥammad Khalīl b. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, d. 1925) of Bangkalan in Madura, affectionately known among the Madurese as Syaikhona (“our shaykh”) Kholil, was, in his day and long after his death, the most highly respected religious authority of Madura and a dominant figure among Javanese Muslims as well. Most of the prominent kiai ( ʿulamāʾ, Muslim religious scholars) of the early twentieth century had spent at least a brief period in his pesantren (Islamic religious boarding school). He had a reputation as a scholar of scriptural Islam but was especially …