Siti Walidah

Siti Walidah (3 January 1872 – 31 May 1946), better known as Nyai Ahmad Dahlan, was an Indonesian women's emancipation figure, the wife of Muhammadiyah's founder Ahmad Dahlan, and the founder of its women's organisation Aisyiyah. The English article gives her birth year as 1872; the day date comes from the Indonesian article and Wikidata. No Arabic or Urdu Wikipedia article exists for her; this account is written from the English and Indonesian articles and the Wikidata item. ^{1 2 3}

She was born at Kauman, Yogyakarta, to Kyai Haji Muhammad Fadli, an ulama and a nobleman of the Yogyakarta Sultanate; the quarter housed many religious figures of the palace. She was schooled at home in Islam, Arabic and Qur'an reading in the Jawi script. She married her cousin Ahmad Dahlan, and they had six children. As he built Muhammadiyah she travelled with him, and because some of his reformist views were considered radical, the couple at times received threats, including death threats before a planned trip to Banyuwangi. ^{1 2}

In 1914 she established the prayer group Sopo Tresno, which she and her husband led in turn, reading the Qur'an and discussing its meaning; she concentrated on the passages dealing with women's issues, and through the group the couple taught reading and writing. With her husband and other Muhammadiyah leaders she discussed formalising the group as a women's organisation; the first proposed name, Fatimah, was rejected for Aisyiyah, derived from Aisha. The new group was formalised on 22 April 1917 with Siti Walidah as its head, and five years later it became part of Muhammadiyah. ^{1 2}

Through Aisyiyah she founded girls' schools and dormitories and literacy and Islamic education programmes for women, preached against forced marriage, and visited branches across Java, arguing against the patriarchal custom of her society that women were meant to be their husbands' partners. The Indonesian article adds that in 1922 she founded the first Aisyiyah prayer house for women's congregational prayer and study, and that in 1926 she launched the magazine Suara Aisyiyah. ^{1 2}

After Ahmad Dahlan's death in 1923 she remained active in Muhammadiyah and Aisyiyah. In 1926 she chaired the fifteenth Muhammadiyah Congress in Surabaya, the first woman to chair such a conference; the wide press coverage brought more women into Aisyiyah and branches opened on other islands. She led Aisyiyah until 1934. During the Japanese occupation, when Aisyiyah's work with women was banned from 10 September 1943, she worked in schools and struggled to keep pupils from being forced into sun worship and Japanese songs. During the Indonesian National Revolution she ran soup kitchens from her home for soldiers, promoted military service among her former students, and took part in discussions of the war with General Sudirman and President Sukarno. ^{1 2}

She died at Kauman at 1 p.m. on 31 May 1946 and was buried four hours later behind the Great Mosque of Kauman; the State Secretary and the Minister of Religion represented the government at her funeral. On 10 November 1971 President Suharto declared her a National Hero of Indonesia. Her school of Islam is not recorded in the sources: her work stood inside Muhammadiyah, which is organisational affiliation, and the only religion values given for her are Islam in general, in the Indonesian infobox and on Wikidata. ^{1 2 3}

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