Saladin? bad idea

[Harovan]

Alexander was from Macedonia and is therefor clearly Yugoslavian.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
he looks a bit like the actor who played Salah ad-Din in the recent movie Kingdom of Heaven

Looks a bit like Bin-Laden to me.

[molly bloom]

I'd say it was fairly obvious that Civ 4 uses Arab as short hand for 'Muslim' and so do many of the posters here, especially those who thought that Mecca should be the 'capital' for the Arabs, despite the fact that in Mohammed's time there were Arabs who had embraced Judaism, Christianity and some who were pagan idolaters and some who probably adhered to a variety of Manichaeism or Zoroastrianism.

The question is, would Salah ud Din be entirely inappropriate as an Arab leader, and why ?

Well, he led a majority Arab empire, he recaptured a city holy to Arabs, Christian or Muslim, and he was part of a civilization with deep-rooted connections to the culture of Arabia and the Middle East.

It's about as pointless saying he shouldn't be a leader of the Arab civilization as it is pointing out the Germanic forebears of Queen Victoria, the Welsh ancestry of Elizabeth Tudor (or Twdwr in Welsh) and the American mother of Winston Churchill.

Benjamin Disraeli is one of Great Britain's most famous and most accomplished Prime Ministers, a successful novelist, and creator of the Imperialist iconography of Victorian Britain.

He also happened to be the descendant of Sephardic Italian Jews who emigrated to Great Britain.

Are there 'better' candidates than Salah ud Din ? Well, yes, of course there are.

[MarkG]

if not Saladin, who?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MarkG
if not Saladin, who?

Abu Bakr, the father of Aisha who was a wife of Muhammad, leader of the armies of the Caliphate against Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire.

The second Caliph, Umar I, under whom the forces of Islam spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Iranian plateau.

The first are two of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs- which comes from 'khalifa' which simply means successor.


You could also have Mu'awiya, founder of the Umayyad dynasty.

There's also Abd al Malik and Haroun al Rashid.

[alva]

Originally posted by Solver
Alexander wasn't even Greek, yet he has always been the Greek leader .

* pulls fishingpole out of the water and checks hook.. *
"yup, there's a little Markos helplessly dangling at the end of it... "
*puts it back in the water to see if we can catch more of them*

[MarkG]

it wasnt solver who got me to answer (see my first post)

plus if i had taken this seriously you'd have pages of text with actual replies not and ....

[MarkG]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Abu Bakr, the father of Aisha who was a wife of Muhammad, leader of the armies of the Caliphate against Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire.

The second Caliph, Umar I, under whom the forces of Islam spread into Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Iranian plateau.

The first are two of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs- which comes from 'khalifa' which simply means successor.


You could also have Mu'awiya, founder of the Umayyad dynasty.

There's also Abd al Malik and Haroun al Rashid.

never heard any of these guys

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MarkG


never heard any of these guys

Time to read up on Islamic and Arab history then. They are quite famous in other parts of the world...


Haroun al Rashid, for instance, scion of the glorious Abbasid dynasty, was responsible for establishing Baghdad as a seat of learning, scientific enquiry and culture- he communicated with China and with Charlemagne, and a strange Europe/Asia spanning partnership ensued, with the Roman Catholic Christian Charlemagne battling the Muslim Umayyads in the Iberian peninsula, and the Muslim al Rashid battling the Orthodox Christian Byzantines in Asia. He defeated Empress Irene's commander, Nicetas.

His reign is immortalized and commemorated in 'The Book of the Thousand and One Nights' .

[GeoModder]

Well, the point remains there's alot less chance that leaders will be included in the game with a "Who?" reaction from the average gamer.

[sophist]

Harun al Rashid would be an excellent choice. I think you could actually ignore Abu Bakr, as he was only the leader of the Muslim Arabs for 2 years, from the death of Muhammed in 632 until his own death in 634. For those who don't know, it cannot be Muhammed as Islam says that you cannot portray him, and I'm sure Firaxis would like to be able to sell this game to Muslims and without protests. If Firaxis had Saladin as a military leader and Harun al Rashid as a builder-type leader in civ4, that would be pretty good. I think the discussion above has satisfied me that it's OK to have a Kurd. Stalin was from Georgia, after all.

[nonoyesnonono]

Well... I just made this remark because I still think Civ should be historically exact - even if Saladin was part of a big muslim alliance against the christian invaders, well that doesn't make him an arab.
This question is even more sensible today because the kurdish people doesn't have an independant country for they own (they live in Turquey, Syria, Irak, and Iran as I know) and are fighting in very different ways (including legal ways if possible, but also guerrila and terrorism) for having an own country - also against... arabs.
Seriously, who cares today if Alexander was Greek or Macedonian? Maybe this question is theorically worth arguing about it, but it's not a sensible point at the actual point of history. Saladin seems to me much more problematic.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by MarkG


never heard any of these guys

How is that possible? I mean, those are well known people in Muslim and Arab history! You should reread your history book ASAP Markos.


Og course, I am very interested in history, but I really thought a couple of those were common known...

[DerSchwarzfalke]

Well... I just made this remark because I still think Civ should be historically exact - even if Saladin was part of a big muslim alliance against the christian invaders, well that doesn't make him an arab.

But he led an Arab empire. Just because he was not Arab does not mean he could not lead the Arabs. That is why he is included in the game as the leader of the Arabs.

What a pedantic objection.

I thought I heard somewhere else that Abu Bakr was going to be one of the other leaders of the Arabs, but I personally would far prefer Harun ar-Rashid. As pointed out above, he is a cultural icon and a definite counterpoint to a more militaristic Salah ad-Din. The sometimes Arabic equivalent to "once upon a time" is "during the reign of Harun ar-Rashid."

[Solver]

Markos loves the subject of Greece and Macedonia .