198 DESTINY DISRUPTED
In 1600, in fact, ordinary folks anywhere in this world would have as-
sumed that the Muslim empires and their adjacent frontier territories
were in fact "the world." Or, to quote University of Chicago historian
Marshall Hodgson, "In the sixteenth century of our era, a visitor from
Mars might well have supposed that the human world was on the verge of
becoming Muslim."^9
The Martian would have been mistaken, of course; the course of his-
tory had already tipped, because of developments in Europe since the
Crusades.