Baba of Karo is a 1954 book by the anthropologist Mary F. Smith. The book is an anthropological record of the Hausa people

Hausa people

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. They are a Sahelian people chiefly located in northern Nigeria and southeastern Niger, but having significant numbers living in regions of Cameroon, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and Sudan...

, partly compiled from an oral account given by Baba (1877-1951), the daughter of a Hausa farmer and Koranic teacher, and translated by Smith.

Smith's husband, the anthropologist M. G. Smith

M. G. Smith

Michael Garfield Smith OM was a Jamaican poet and social anthropologist. Smith was the son of a descendant of English army officers and merchants, and his mother a 'coloured' nurse who died in childbirth. Smith served as Franklin M. Crosby Professor Emeritus of the Human Environment at Yale...

, contributed an explanation of the Hausa's cultural context.

The 1981 reissue of Baba of Karo contains a foreword by Hilda Kuper

Hilda Kuper

Hilda Beemer Kuper, née Beemer, was a social anthropologist most notable for her extensive work on Swazi culture. Born to Lithuanian Jewish and Austrian Jewish parents in Bulawayo, she moved to South Africa after the death of her father...

.