Last month, however, the softly spoken 23-year-old blew himself up in the centre of Makhachkala, the bustling capital, in what is thought to be Dagestan’s first suicide bombing.
The force of the blast severed his head and blew his body into pieces. His left arm, a few yards away, still had a detonator taped to the hand.
The bomb, which killed only Ibraghimov, appears to have gone off by accident seconds before he reached his intended target, a funeral attended by some of the region’s highest ranking police officers.
His motives are not entirely clear, but his actions have sent shockwaves across Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic of 2.5m people that, during the past year, has become Russia’s most violent after Chechnya, Dagestan’s war-torn neighbour.
“I lie awake at night desperately trying to understand what could have pushed him to commit such an act, but I just can’t find an answer,” said his father Mogomed, a dentist who saw him the night before he died. “He prayed five times a day but he was no fanatic and he never talked politics.
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“He was his normal self. I just refuse to believe that he’d do such a thing. All I ask now is to be given what’s left of him for a proper Muslim burial.”
Authorities in Dagestan have played down the significance of the attack by suggesting that Ibraghimov had a personal vendetta against some of the mourners. His elder brother, Jakhbarilov, a fireman, thinks he could have been compelled by someone else to carry it out. The dead man’s fiancée, Asyet, 17, is so shocked that she can barely speak.
For most observers, however, it was clearest sign yet that, across the region, Islamic extremism is becoming a rallying force against poverty, mass unemployment, endemic corruption and police brutality.
Last year Dagestan, which is home to more than 30 ethnic groups, most with their own language, suffered more than 100 attacks ascribed to extremists bent on splitting from Russia and creating an Islamic state across the north Caucasus.
Bombs have gone off in Makhachkala, dozens of police officers have been gunned down and clashes between small cells of armed militants and special forces have become common.
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Last July, in one of the most brazen attacks, 10 Russian soldiers died and 20 were wounded by a home-made bomb detonated as their lorry pulled up outside a bathhouse.
Then, two weeks ago, Chechen rebels led by Shamil Basayev, the man behind the 2004 Beslan school siege in which 330 people died, issued a statement saying that they intended to start a holy war in Dagestan.
The violence is of grave concern to President Vladimir Putin, who flew to Makhachkala last summer to order Russian forces to step up security.
Dagestan is not only the largest and most populous republic in the north Caucasus, it is also the most strategically significant: a long stretch of Russia’s Caspian coastline lies within its borders, making it an important route for trade and oil.
The Kremlin has responded with a fierce crackdown in which many local militant leaders have been arrested or killed. Allegations of torture and wrongful detention have helped the extremists to find new recruits.
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The tension has put remote mountain villages such as Ibraghimov’s in the spotlight.
Ghimri, wedged between snow-capped peaks and deep gorges, is the birthplace of Imam Shamil, an Islamic warrior who became a hero in the north Caucasus by fighting against the tsar’s troops until his surrender in 1859.
The road into the village of 3,200 people — 500 of them unemployed young men — is adorned by banners with Arabic quotations from the Koran and Shamil. A special forces checkpoint stands guard.
Inhabitants deny that their village is a hotbed of Islamic militancy. Last week the only blood flowing along its narrow lanes was that of a cow sacrificed by men in sheepskin hats who had gathered in front of the mosque for a funeral.
But less than two weeks ago army helicopters and artillery pounded a suspected rebel hideout on the outskirts. Militants shot dead the local police chief last year and a Dutch aid worker who was held hostage for more than two years is thought to have been hidden nearby at one point.
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Officials suspect that militants from around Ghimri were also behind an assassination attempt in Makhachkala last month on Magomed Gazimagomedov, the republic’s deputy interior minister. It failed but killed the minister’s son, an officer in the local branch of the FSB, the former KGB.
It was two days later, as senior ministry figures gathered at Gazimagomedov’s house to express their condolences, that Ibraghimov set off his explosives less than 200 yards from the mourners.
Ibraghimov’s neighbours remain puzzled by what happened. “We may never know what went wrong as he approached the funeral party,” said one young militant. “But the important point is that the conflict is spilling over.
“Islam is spreading. We are fed up with this corrupt system. The time has come to change it. We won’t be put down any more. Allah is on our side.”