The author reconstructs collective memory theory in light of the Kazak case, stripping it of its postmodernist baggage, and proposing a place for it in a general theory of religion. This ethnography of Muslim life among the Kazaks of Central Asia describes the sacralisation of land and ethnic identity, local understanding of Islamic purity, the Kazak ancestor cult and its domestic spirituality, pilgrimage at the tombs of Sufi saints, and folk therapies shaped by traditional Islamic medicine and Inner Asian shamanism.