The Muslim Cult of Saints among the Tatar of the Volga-Ural Region: Specificities of Formation and Transformation

Abstract

The article discusses the cultural specificities of the cult of saints among the Muslim Tatar of the Volga-Ural region. We draw on a variety of sources (such as writings of the nineteenth and twentieth- century Tatar social thinkers, scholarly research, contemporary internet publications, as well as our own fieldwork data) to examine the various facets of the cult, which have been shaped under the influence of a particular form of Sufism, and to trace the changes that sacred localities have undergone during the last century and a half.