This ethnographic study is based on two field trips to the Aqtau area, West Kazakhstan Region, in September 2018 and March 2019. During visit, I did participant observation at the shrines of two modern Muslim saints, Beket Ata and Shopan Ata, and in the city of Aqtau. Interviews were conducted with locals and pilgrims; books and booklets that document contemporary hagiographic processes on the two saints were collected from local bookshops at both sites. These oral and written materials have allowed me to question three different issues.
The first consists of revisiting Beket Ata as a “tribal saint”, specific to the Aday tribe, through a study of his cult both within and beyond the Manghïstau Peninsula. If this cult is based on a patron-client system of relations, relying on local notables of the Aday tribal group, the attendance of his holy site by pilgrims coming from other, sometimes remote regions suggests the ongoing transformation of his status from a tribal to a regional saint...