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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AllEnglishעברית中文
Form
AllEssayField NoteResearchTravel JournalConversationReading ListPhoto Essay
Theme
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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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