Zeňňi Baba is the patron spirit of cattle and cattle-breeders, a saint-cult shared by the Turkmen with the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Volga. Turkmen tradition remembers him as a righteous, dark-complexioned shepherd who lived and was buried in the north of the country; his best-known shrine stands at the settlement of Murche. Scholars read the cult as a Muslim reworking of an older pastoral guardian spirit: an Islamic saint who retains the functions of a pre-Islamic patron of livestock.