Noam Backner
עברית

Writing

An archive, not a blog

Essays, field notes, research pieces, conversations and reading lists. Long-form, sourced, and revised when the ground contradicts them.

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AllEssayField NoteResearchTravel JournalConversationReading ListPhoto Essay
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AllChinaTibetInner AsiaSilk RoadsBuddhism & ReligionLandscape & PlaceFood & AgricultureHistory & CivilizationTravel & EducationHuman Development
  • Two fettered demons by Muhammad Siyah Qalam: one holds a cup beside a Chinese blue-and-white vessel, the other plays a spiked fiddle.

    Essay · 16 August 2026 · 9 min · EN

    Demons, Saints and Black Pens

    Muhammad Siyah Qalam and the Eurasian world the Mongols left behind.

    Khorasan · Transoxiana · Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

  • A rough block of lapis lazuli, deep ultramarine with white calcite veins and golden pyrite flecks.

    Research · 13 August 2015 · 9 min · EN

    Heaven in the Rock: The Lapis Road

    One mine in the Hindu Kush supplied the blue of Ur and of Tutankhamun's mask. What that tells us about the first world trade network.

    Sar-i-Sang, Badakhshan · Tepe Hissar · Mohenjo-daro · Ur

  • Camellia sinensis var. assamica growing on a mist-covered slope in Yunnan.

    Essay · 8 December 2014 · 15 min · EN

    Out of the Mist: The Old Tea Horse Road

    Chinese soil lacks selenium, and Tibet had horses. A conversation with a former caravan leader about what that trade actually was.

    Yunnan · Sichuan · Lijiang · Litang · Lhasa

  • Jewish children with their teacher in Samarkand, photographed in colour by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky in the early twentieth century.

    Essay · 4 September 2014 · 16 min · EN

    Wandering: Jews of the Silk Road

    Radanite merchants, a Jewish steppe empire, and a Mandarin in Kaifeng who mistook four apostles for four sons of Jacob.

    Kaifeng · Khazaria · Samarkand · Ghur, Afghanistan · Merv

  • Abbot Wang Yuanlu of Dunhuang, photographed in 1907, the self-appointed guardian of the Mogao grottoes.

    Research · 31 August 2014 · 15 min · EN

    The Lotus in the Sands

    How Buddhism travelled the trade routes into China — and how a Daoist caretaker at Dunhuang found the record of it behind a cracked mural.

    Tarim basin · Kucha · Khotan · Dunhuang · Gandhara

  • A jailoo — summer pasture — beside Lake Song Kul in central Kyrgyzstan, with yurts on open grassland.

    Travel Journal · 27 July 2014 · 9 min · EN

    A Thousand Celestial Meadows: Kyrgyzstan

    A nation of Siberian nomads on a trans-civilisational frontier, and the summer pastures that still hold its identity.

    Eastern Pamir · Tian Shan · Song Kul · Osh · Fergana valley

  • Tash Rabat, a stone caravanserai of the fifteenth century set in a high valley in Kyrgyzstan.

    Essay · 19 July 2014 · 8 min · EN

    Caravanserais: The Strongholds of the Soul

    From frontier ribat forts to Safavid road inns — the architecture that made long-distance trade possible, and the metaphor it became.

    Anatolia · Transoxiana · Iran · Tash Rabat, Kyrgyzstan

  • A high valley in the Pamirs, with green irrigated fields below bare mountain slopes.

    Travel Journal · 5 July 2014 · 17 min · EN

    The Jewels of Badakhshan

    Ismaili Islam, four-layered ceilings and dying luthiers in the river valleys of the Pamirs.

    Badakhshan · Khorog · Wakhan valley · Yamg · Andorov

  • Open grassland running up to bare mountains on the edge of the Central Asian steppe.

    Essay · 18 June 2014 · 6 min · EN

    In the Gates of Turan

    Why the Shahnameh's oldest quarrel is an ecological one: the sown land against the sea of grass.

    Iranian plateau · Transoxiana · The Eurasian steppe