KIZLYAR, Russia (Agencies) - A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Russia’s mostly Muslim southern fringe who are increasingly desperate in the face of violence.

From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims have lined up in recent weeks in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Qoran appear and fade every few days.
Pinkish in color and several centimeters high, the Qoranic verse “Be thankful or grateful to Allah” was printed on the infant’s right leg in clearly legible Arabic script, religious leaders said. Visiting foreign journalists later saw a single letter after the rest had vanished.
“The fact that this miracle happened here is a signal to us to take the lead and help our brothers and sisters find peace,” said Sagid Murtazaliyev, head of the Kizlyar region about 150 km (95 miles) north of Makhachkala, the sprawling Dagestani capital on the Caspian Sea.
“We must not forget there is a war going on here,” he told Muslim leaders who had invited the press to witness what they unequivocally claim is a sign from God.
Islam in Russia is widely believed to have originated in ethnically rich Dagestan, where 3 million people speak over 30 languages and whose ancient walled city of Derbent claims to be Russia’s oldest city.
A spate of recent suicide bombs and armed attacks on police and security services in Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighboring Chechnya, where Russia has fought two separatist wars, has shattered a few years of relative calm in the North Caucasus.
Local leaders have told President Dmitry Medvedev they are struggling to contain an insurgency pervading all spheres of society in the north Caucasus -- a region named after the Caucasus mountains that divide Russia from strategically important Georgia and Azerbaijan, where oil and gas pipelines flow to the West.
Up to 2,000 pilgrims from Russia’s 20 million Muslim population come daily to see the docile, blue-eyed baby, whose pink brick house has become a shrine.
Vladimir Zakharov, deputy director of the Caucasus Research Centre at the Moscow State University of International Relations, said he was not in a position to judge the veracity of the claims.
Green satin flags mark the way to the baby’s modest family home in Kizlyar, a small town of lime-colored mosques, cornfields and dirt roads whose dust bellows into the sky.
Dagestan’s omnipresent armed police patrol the house while they change photos of Yakubov’s arms and legs covered in Arabic script from previous episodes to both jubilation and wails from the bustling crowd.
They say the fact Yakubov’s 27-year-old father Shamil works in the police force -- a regular target by militants -- is proof of divine intervention.
Makhachkala’s influential mayor Sayid Amirov, who has survived around a dozen attacks on his life since the mid-1990s, interpreted the recent buzz around the baby as a warning.
“What happened here is indeed a miracle,” he told reporters.
Holding up his right foot where a single Arabic letter remained from the latest episode, Yakubov’s 26-year-old mother Madina said she had no doubt the verses -- which first appeared two weeks after birth -- were connected to extremism.
“Allah is great and he sent me my miracle child to keep our people safe,” she told Reuters, adjusting her tight purple hijab which crowns a multi-colored kaftan.
Divine “miracles” are common in Christianity -- such as weeping icons and stigmata, bleeding wounds in the hands and feet similar to those of Christ.
Outside her home, pilgrims prayed and gave thanks to Allah.
Supermarket attendant Madina Nikolayeva traveled from Ukraine to see the baby. Behind her, Akhmed Khadzhy had been waiting all day in the queue.
“Allah is watching over Dagestan,” said the pensioner from Khasavyurt near the Chechen border, where clashes with security forces had killed three militants recently.
The child and his family were to travel from their home in Dagestan to meet with Ravil Gainutdin, who heads the Russian Mufti Council, as well as with believers in the Moscow Congregational Mosque
“The boy, on whose body verses from the Holy Qoran periodically appear, will be shown to the wider Muslim community, including religious leaders, diplomats, ambassadors and ordinary believers,” said Abdul-Vahed Niyazov, who is an organizer of the visit.
Niyazov said everyone would have a chance to see the miraculous child with his own eyes.
After the meeting with Moscow Muslims, the Yakubov family is to return home to Dagestan, he said.
The infant’s mother told RIA Novosti verses from Islam’s holy book appear on her son’s body on Mondays and Fridays. Madina Yakubova said the boy’s temperature rises to 40 degrees Celsius, and the boy cries and weeps on these days. The inscriptions are seen for three days and then disappear little by little, and new verses show up on the baby’s body.
A representative of a local mosque confirmed the mother’s account.
Caption: Russian boy with Qoran verses on skin