Thanks Janskey! Will do! I will do Tomyris or Pericles next. Updated Saladin's music entry after some correspondence with Geoff Knorr, and because the song's contested origin is quite novel, I post it here below:
Leader Music (Links to Medieval Version)
Banat Iskandaria—The Saladin-led Arabian Empire's song appears (
at least officially, on Geoff Knorr's website) to be based on
Banat Iskandaria or
The Girls of Alexandria (arguably fitting as Egypt is where Saladin began his rise to power). However, Geoff Knorr (the main composer for Civ VI's themes) said that as far as he can tell, the actual origin of the song is unknown. Many countries in the Balkans and Near East claim the song as their own, as shown in the documentary "
Whose is This Song?" (directed by Adela Peeva) which shows how various Balkan countries, Turkey, and others
passionately, aggressively claim the song as their own (#nationalism). The song has various incarnations and names, and each has a different set of lyrics and meaning--there is, for example, the Muslim song
Talama Ashku Galami which is a praise song for Allah, Turks claim it for
Turkey (one of the many songs there based on the melody is named
Katibim).
As far as the documentary makes clear, the song was performed as early as 1700, as an Armenian, Ottoman, Sephardic Jewish and even Persian song, travelling widely over the Near East (see Eleni Elefterias-Kostakidis'
"'Whose Is This Song?' Nationalism and Identity through the lens of Adela Peeva, p. 39). One alternate origin story which may be of interest comes from
"koredozo" on Reddit: "
There's a theory that it was created by an Iraqi composer named Mullah Osman Al-Muselli or first appeared in an Armenian operetta in the 19th century, both of which would make it appropriate for Saladin (who was born in Tikrit to Kurdish ancestors originally from what is today Armenia,) but no one really knows its origins."
How does all this relate to Saladin, you might ask? As Geoff puts it (correctly), "[t]he Civ VI leader for Arabia, Saladin, historically would have controlled many of the lands that claim the melody as their own, which is one of the reasons I chose the melody for Arabia." Indeed, as mentioned above, Saladin's army included, for example, Armenians and Turks--the modern forebears of the very people who would argue over who actually made the song many years later. The song perhaps ironically unifies many regions in the same way Saladin did, albeit through their joint arguments with each other over ownership of the song. And such quarrels explain why Reddit is replete with
Turkish people claiming that the song is "Turkish" and therefore inappropriate for Civ VI's Arabia, as well as people stating that the song
reminds them of a Boney M. song about Rasputin.