Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to understand how the notions of 'miracle' and 'saint' have been maintained throughout the Soviet period in Azerbaijan's modern urban context and how residential houses have been turned and 'branded' as prayer houses.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to understand how the notions of 'miracle' and 'saint' have been maintained throughout the Soviet period in a modern urban context. The practice of pilgrimage to saints' tombs and graves has typically been associated with Azerbaijan's traditional rural lifestyles and theorized as a 'little' tradition of practicing Islam. However, it is obvious that beliefs in saint's miracles form a significant part of modern urban lifestyles in Azerbaijan. The aim of this paper is to understand how far the cult of Shia saints and pilgrimage to sacred sites is embedded in Baku's urban life, infrastructures (transport) and how the secular authorities interact with it. There are different worshipping places in the city, which are 'branded' with the name of Shia saints. In my case study I focus on a residential house in central Baku, which has been turned into a semi-formal prayer house in the 1990s. By 'branded' I mean that the site was incorporated in the hagiographical literature, tourist guidebooks and became an important canon in miracle stories and visuals for pilgrims and tourists. I argue that Shia popular saint veneration practices construct flexible 'shared' spaces, which are not only 'portals' to other worlds, but also the sites where the city's social life, materiality and politics are inscribed.