Qambar Ata is the patron spirit of horses in Kazakh folk religion, the pir under whose protection the herds of a horse-breeding people are placed. His name is invoked over foaling mares, at the branding and gelding of colts, and in blessings for the multiplication of the stud; herders count him the ancestral guardian of all that pertains to the horse. He belongs to a set of tutelary ata each governing a kind of livestock, and though his figure has absorbed the coloring of a Muslim saint, his function reaches back to the pre-Islamic reverence for the spirit-protectors of the animals on which steppe life depended. Sources sometimes link or confuse him with the epic hero Qambar.