It is this which provides a key to grasping the hemisphere-wide role of Islam in China, India, South and Southeast Asia, as well as the Balkans and the Maghrib. The Middle Periods were times of the greatest advances of Islamic civilization. Thus Hodgson’s reexamination of the traditional periodization led to a remarkably fruitful reinvention of how Islamic civilization might be conceived, this time not as a truncated version of Europe, but in a world historical context and on its own terms.