Rich Baker said:

"It's a fine distinction, but I see the Khinasi lands as Moorish Spain,
or
maybe Ottoman Turkey. El-Arrasi is a kind of inside-out El Cid, driving
the
western culture out of Khinasi lands. Or you could maybe interpret him
as a
Suleiman who won a reverse Lepanto. "

Hah! Dude, I am *so* in tune with Birthright. When desribing the
Khinasi to my players, one of them said: "So they're like the Arabs,"
and I said, "well, they're more like Turkish Moors."

I told my players that thinking of any race as a direct analogy to a
real world culture was going to cause problems. Like the Vos are
clearly Steppe Nomads, but not everything that's true of steppe nomads
is true of the Vos. The same holds true for all the races. And that's
as it should be. What point lifting Scandanavian cultures for the
Rjurik if you're not going to put a unique Birthright spin on it? After
all, we've already *got* Scandanavian cultures here in the real world!
And I remember describing the Elfs as "Celtic. Lot's of 'w's and 'y's
masquerading as vowels."