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This essay critiques the portrayal of Enlightenment-era reverse ethnographies, emphasizing the need for eastern Muslim perspectives.

March 14, 2026

The Islamic Critique: A Persian Traveler in Regency England's Garden of Eden

Key Points

This essay critiques the portrayal of Enlightenment-era reverse ethnographies, emphasizing the need for eastern Muslim perspectives.
Analyzed Graeber and Wengrow's arguments on European sociopolitical life and Indigenous critiques.
Examined the case of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan Shirazi Ilchi Kabir's visits to London.
Explored themes of gender and sexual norms within the context of reverse ethnographies.
Highlighted the lack of eastern Muslim perspectives in Enlightenment critiques.
Demonstrated how Vauxhall Gardens served as a venue for social commentary on gender norms.
Argued that the genre of reverse ethnographies is not limited to the Americas.

Abstract

Abstract: This essay offers a corrective to Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity . Their focus on the "Indigenous critique" of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century Europe's sociopolitical life presents a lopsided account of the Enlightenment-era genre of reverse ethnographies, in which fictional Native Americans hold up a satiric mirror to their European interlocutors. For the authors, this genre is unique to the Americas and resonates with communal gardens designed for playful socialization rather than agricultural production in stratified urbanizing societies—an argument that omits eastern Muslim perspectives. A case in point is Mirza Abul Hassan Khan Shirazi Ilchi Kabir (1776–1846), the Iranian envoy to Britain in 1809–10. The publicity surrounding his sociable visits to London's Vauxhall Garden virtualized the Islamic critiques of gender and sexual norms found in reverse ethnographies such as Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes .

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