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Ṣawt

Sound · Heritage · Presence

The voices thatshaped the air

Ṣawt is an independent archive of women’s Qur’an recitation — gathering audio, film, photography and writing to trace a sound heritage that has always been public, and rarely recorded.

Enter the audio libraryAbout the project
Warm light falling through a latticed window onto hands holding an illuminated manuscript
Reading room, private collection — undated.

1,240+

Recordings catalogued

31

Countries represented

1938–2026

Span of the collection

Now listening

Selected recordings

All recordings
Manuscript pages beside a reel of magnetic audio tape

The archive

Preservation is a form of listening

Cassette, reel, radio broadcast, phone recording. Each object in the collection is catalogued with its place, its lineage and the consent of the people who made it — so that the practice remains legible to those who come next.

Browse the archive

Editorial

Writing & field notes

Essay · May 2026

The voice in the courtyard

On the acoustics of shared domestic space, and how women's recitation shaped the sound of the home long before the microphone.

Research · March 2026

Cassette networks and the travelling voice

Duplicated, posted and passed hand to hand — how magnetic tape carried women reciters across borders in the 1970s and 80s.

Field note · January 2026

Listening as method

Notes from three months of recording in Ibadan: consent, care, and what it means to archive a living practice.