01-07-2005 11:52									#31
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Alexander was from Macedonia and is therefor clearly Yugoslavian.

	01-07-2005 12:21									#32
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quote: 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.

	01-07-2005 14:05									#33
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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.

	01-07-2005 15:36									#34
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if not Saladin, who?

	01-07-2005 15:45									#35
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quote: 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.

	01-07-2005 16:49									#36
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quote: 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*

	01-07-2005 17:09									#37
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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 ....

	01-07-2005 17:10									#38
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quote: 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

	01-07-2005 17:41									#39
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quote: 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' .

	01-07-2005 17:53									#40
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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.

	01-07-2005 18:07									#41
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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.

	01-07-2005 18:08									#42
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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.

	01-07-2005 18:08									#43
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quote: 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...

	01-07-2005 18:26									#44
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quote: 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."

	01-07-2005 19:09									#45
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Markos loves the subject of Greece and Macedonia .

	01-07-2005 21:20									#46
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Yeah, time to bomb Skopje.

	01-07-2005 22:18									#47
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Another reason for it not to be Abu Bakr is because Shi'ite Muslims believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was Muhammed's cousin and son-in-law, was the rightful leader of the Muslim community after the death of Muhammed.

	01-07-2005 23:33									#48
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I always heard that alexander was macedonian too...i guess we need a poll in the off topic

	02-07-2005 00:04									#49
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quote: Originally posted by Kaak I always heard that alexander was macedonian too...

Alexander was born Macedonian. Nobody disputes that. The issue is whether it's legitimate for him to be leader of the Greeks in the game.

	02-07-2005 00:31									#50
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I thought the ancient Macedoniams were Dorian Greeks that remained semi-barbarious, as opposed the the Dorians that eventually intermingled with the Ionian Greeks farther south?


Anyway, about Saladin, he would be a good leader. Arab civilization was not just Arab culture after all.

	02-07-2005 04:11									#51
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quote: The issue is whether it's legitimate for him to be leader of the Greeks in the game.

No, not really. It's a looong debate, which Markos always loses, about whether Alexander is really Greek or Macedonian. Odin is correct that the Macedonians were Dorians that were considered to be semi-barbarous.

--

Anyway, there probably are better leaders, but Saladin is the best known and would be known by the people playing the game.

	02-07-2005 09:02									#52
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quote: Originally posted by Solver Markos loves the subject of Greece and Macedonia .

Any chance of Macedonia joining Greece?

	02-07-2005 12:04									#53
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Not in a lifetime!

	02-07-2005 14:10									#54
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui quote: The issue is whether it's legitimate for him to be leader of the Greeks in the game. No, not really. It's a looong debate, which Markos always loses, about whether Alexander is really Greek or Macedonian. Odin is correct that the Macedonians were Dorians that were considered to be semi-barbarous.

I think it was Norman Davies who put it best in his book on Europe- 'Europe: A History'

http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/...uropereview.htm

wherein he says that Macedonia was as Greek as Prussia was German. And given that Electors of Brandenburg-Prussia were still trying to get Germans (that is, people actually born to German parents in German territories on or near the Rhine) to 'emigrate' to Prussia in the 17th Century I think we can tell where he's coming from.

It makes as much sense to say Alexander was Greek as to say Mohammed Ali Jinnah or Mohandas Gandhi were English or British- because they'd had British educations, British teachers, lived in Great Britain, imbibed British culture, et cetera.

Why would Greek rulers so sure of their Hellenic identity strive so hard to prove their descent from Greeks, and invite Aristotle and Euripides to live and teach in their country ?


Smells like Victoria and Albert wearing Highland dress to prove their Britishness, or Kleopatra identifying herself with Egyptian Isis.

	02-07-2005 21:29									#55
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Alexander was "great" in no way except miltarily. Pericles, by all means, is a much better representative of a "great" greek leader. (in case you don't know, pericles more or less invented western culture)

	02-07-2005 21:45									#56
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Wasn't his 'invented' culture defeated by an enemy city-state?

	02-07-2005 21:46									#57
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More on the original topic, the arabs themselves thru most of the history of the muslum empires cared about how similar someones culture was too their own (particularly weater they were fellow followers of Islam) and not their nationality.

It was only in the early 20th century when the "Young Turks" took over the Ottoman Empire and made attempts to Turkify the empire in addition to centralizing and modernizing it that the Arabs starting rising up in revolt. The Balkins had revolted one ethic group at a time in the 19th century led by merchants against the govt inefficency + laws that were supressing economic development. Albania was so backwards that it was set free just after turn of 20th century because of a combo of Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs all wanting the Turks out of the Balkins (and succeeding militarily) and yet being able to agree among themselves (to the point of actually fighting each other) on who should rule Albania and compromised on the Albanians gets to rule Albanians.

	02-07-2005 21:54									#58
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Nationality as defined by ethic descent is extremely superficial.

Go back in the past far enough and you see everybody at one time was a foreigner to where they now live and also are the result of multiple ethic groups merging.

In one of the more famous cases, was during the middle ages the pagan Prussians were massacred by the christian Germans. Those moving into there decided to adopt the Prussian name for themselves.
Along a similar vain, almost every single US state is named after a native indian tribe.

	02-07-2005 23:09									#59
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quote: I think it was Norman Davies who put it best in his book on Europe- 'Europe: A History'

Great book, btw

Oh, and on your post about Alexander... truth.

	03-07-2005 09:55									#60
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I thought the Ionians were the eastern Greeks, just as much outsiders to the central (Corinthian?) Greek culture as the Dorians (and Macedonians). After Alexander they shared a common culture. There was no Greek empire without Alexander.

What we can say of Salah ad-Din is he wasn't ruler of a Kurdish empire.