Based on the authors’ fieldwork carried out in Southern Dagestan in 2021-2023, the article investigates the emergence of a new holy-fool saint venerated as miracle (karamat) worker. In the post-Soviet Muslim hagiography, this type is different from those of Arab missionaries who converted Dagestani highlanders into Islam in the early Middle ages, shahid martyrs of jihad warfare, Muslim scholars and Sufi masters, who dominated the cult of the saints in the Eastern Caucasus until the beginning of the twentieth century. This article studies the case of sheikh Waghuf-buba Ismailov (1894-1972) in the Lezgin village of Lutkun. For the last 30 years he turned from a little-known local saint (awliya’) into the third most venerated character in the Muslim hagiography of Southern Dagestan after the 40 legendary Arab shahids in the town of Derbent known as Kyrkhlar, and sheikh Pir Suleyman in the holy mountain of Shalbuzdag and in the abandoned sacred village of Lgar-Pirkent. By its type, Muslim holy-fools are close to the new saints from various religious groups, appeared in the post-Soviet space, including the Shiite sheikh Mir-Movsum-agha, better known as the Baku “Boneless Saint,” Et-agha (1883-1950), and Orthodox blessed elders like Matrona of Moscow (1885-1952). To date, the Lutkun holy-fool has not yet been studied. The article proposes a “thick description” of the two holy places related to Waghuf-buba. The focus is made on the entangled narratives in his cult - popular Islamic, Sufi, Soviet and national. The cult’s epistemology, formation and dissemination are examined. The research relies on interviews, epigraphy, handwritten primary sources, photo documentation, as well as Internet blogs in Lezgin, Arabic and Russian.
