Few life stories of Hausa women were recorded in their own words. The best known is Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa (1954), edited by Mary Smith from conversations in 1949–1950 with a woman from the village of Karo, near Zaria, born around 1877. Baba describes growing up in a farming and trading household, marriage, work, children, the raiding and insecurity that marked the end of the nineteenth century, and the arrival of British rule in the early twentieth century.
The book is valued by historians because it gives the opinions of an ordinary woman about events usually recorded by men and officials. It also illustrates how much life varied: Baba farmed, traded and made her own choices within the limits of her time. Like all oral life histories, it records one person’s memory and perspective, and should be read together with other sources.
Sources for this article
- Smith 1954, whole work