First of all, for anyone interesting in playing this save, I'll include the starting save. It's a fairly interesting map. I'd almost think they had a mountain bias, but of course that would make no sense with Arabia. You'd think they would have a desert bias, but apparently not. A desert bias would be pretty lethal considering they had not bonuses for desert. Which of course puts them at a serious disadvantage on TSL maps.
So this is kind of a strange civ in that the unique building boosts a different currency (faith), where the civ ability for a faith building boosts the science currency. So I just built both in a lot of cities, though I should have built more holy sites I suppose. For some reason I misread that as all Arabian cities, I wasn't paying close attention to the qualifier at the end. Just to be sure I verified it:
I do like the tooltip is handy in this situation. Sometimes this game can be ambiguous about some values, but at least this is explained in the tooltip.
So because you are encouraged to build 2 districts, they are well suited for both science and religious victory. I went science only so I could compare them to China. And they did surpass China, though not by as much as I thought they would. But I got a little bogged down with people attacking me, and had to devote more resources to defense than I would have liked. I had to defend on 3 fronts which wasn't easy. I mainly used manluks and crosswbowmen for defense. But I did use them to liberate some city states.
In hindsight, maybe I should have played a more peaceful game instead of conquering Egypt's only 2 cities. Other people were hostile towards me for much of the game, I had numerous surprise wars against me. But I wouldn't have had good land to settle had I done so. And Australia kept conquering Carthage, he's the biggest hypocrite in this game. I liberated Carthage 3 times and La Venta once.
Here are their abilities and some thoughts:
The Last Prophet: Automatically receives the final Great Prophet when the next-to-last one is claimed (if one has not been earned already). +1 Science per foreign city following Arabia's Religion.
I think I did get the final prophet, I kind of ignored the prophet race, so I can't be sure. I just build a holy site and shrine and waited. I didn't spread the religion outside my civilization, I kind of forgot about the 2nd part of this ability. While I did have massive faith from an early relic and Earth Goddess, I mainly used it on great people.
Righteousness of the Faith: The Worship Building for Arabia's Religion can be purchased by any player at one-tenth of the usual Faith cost. +10% Science, Faith, and Culture on Arabian cities with this Worship building.
Now I think I understand this better, it's very nice. I wish I had built more holy sites. Only down side is having to get all the way up to temple first, takes a bit of production, but the payoff is worth it. The faith costs to buy were very low.
Mamluk:
Can't complaing about a fast uu, but it's not real powerful, and I had a little trouble taking Carthage (the first time) with them, had to wait for some reinforcements. It's safer leaving them vulnerable to city attack with their heal ability. Great units for pillaging as I found out. I did a lot of pillaging of Australia.
Madrassa:
This does give an extra science over the university so that's good. The faith is okay. I did manage a +4 adjacency campus in my capital, so can't complain about 4 extra faith.
I beat my China science victory by 15 turns. In hindsight, I could have done better and built more holy sites. I can reasonably say they are a better science civ than China, but no way will they compare to Korea when I play them. My science was 595 per turn on my turn of victory (epic speed standard size map). I grade this civilization A-. They may be better suited for religious victory. In any case, religious victory should always be faster, and is the fastest way to victory with this civ. I may actually play them again going for religious victory.
My final save game screenshot. Rushing the builder will finish the science victory. Hattin was a poor city location, I settled there not knowing what lay beyond those mountains (turns out there were more mountains), so limited space was an issue, still managed a campus and theater square in this city.