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Rosemary Sutcliff

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Blood & Sand Paperback – February 1, 1989

by Rosemary Sutcliff (Author)

4.1 186 ratings

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Why on earth, in the Year of Our Lord 1807, was he in Egypt fighting the Turks? Like many a soldier before him and after, Private Thomas Keith of the 78th Highlanders had very little idea of why and his comrades were about to be thrown into battle against superior forces, far away on a foreign field.

And later, lying wounded and a prisoner in a village headman’s house, one of a pitiful handful of survivors, he could have had no idea at all that he was at the start of an extraordinary series of adventures that would see him rise to become Emir of the holy Islamic city of Medina….

Based on a true story

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Ottoman Empire (that "Sick Old Man of Europe"), is the setting of an aptly titled novel that examines the loyalty between men that helps makes warfare bearable. Thomas Keith, a Scottish soldier during the Napoleonic wars, is captured in 1807 in the Nile delta by Turkish forces under the Egyptian viceroy. With no reason to rejoin the English forces, he is persuaded to become an officer in the viceroy's army. Training for desert warfare, and witnessing the fellowship and piety of the Bedouin troops, he converts to Islam. During a long but unsuccessful campaign to free the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from forces hostile to the Turks, Thomas commands a troop of cavalry, marries a girl he has rescued and serves as amir (governor) of Medina, making a close friend of Tussun Bey, the viceroy's son. Loyalty and friendship are the strong thread on which Sutcliffe strings her stirring narrative--most of it based on historical fact. In this veteran British author's hands, what might have become merely a harsh tale of violence in the deserts of Arabia becomes a memorable, sensitively rendered story.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton General Division (February 1, 1989)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 391 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340497424
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340497425
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.8 ounces

Best Sellers Rank: #5,830,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #69,053 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.1 186 ratings

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Rosemary Sutcliff

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Initially an art-school trained painter of miniatures, Rosemary Sutcliff’s first children's book was published in 1950, and from then on she devoted her time and talents to the writing of children's books and history novels, which have placed her name high in the field of contemporary children's literature and historical fiction. The UK Guardian newspaper called her a “writer of genius” in their obituary. Rosemary received an OBE in the 1975 Birthday Honours List, and a CBE in 1990.

Rosemary Sutcliff's novels won much critical acclaim in her lifetime and since. The best-known of her Roman novels is The Eagle of the Ninth, and the related trilogy of which the second, The Lantern Bearers, was awarded the 1959 Carnegie Medal. Her re-telling of the legend of Tristan and Iseult was highly highly recommended for the same award in 1972, once the award was opened up for re-awarding to the same author.

Rosemary Sutcliff was born in Surrey, the daughter of a naval officer. Later in her life she lived in Devon and then Sussex. At the age of two she contracted the progressively wasting Still's disease, and hence spent most of her life in a wheelchair. Sadly, Rosemary died in 1992 at the age of 72.

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4.1 out of 5

186 global ratings

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Sam B. Wagner

Action, intrigue, deception, in the early 1800’s pm the deserts of Egypt and Arabia

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2016

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Captured by the Egyptians and one of the few survivors of his Scots regiment, Thomas is pulled from the ranks of his fellow soldiers who are to be repatriated and ransomed ---and he is sold as an outstanding warrior to one of the leading Egyptians. Befriended and purchased by the son of another, he rises through the military to become the head of their cavalry, leading training and fighting complex battles and finally capturing the holy cities from the control of their oppressive fanatic Muslim overlords. An interesting read, filled with twists and turns, a surprise ending and well worth the time. Interesting insight into early Islam -- about the time of the Barbary Pirates.

3 people found this helpful

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Aussiemum

An historical drama

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2022

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Sutcliffe always has a way of making history come alive. I knew very little about this time period and it was very interesting to read about how the Highlander soldier Thomas became a Muslim and the Governor of Medina. It’s all based on a true story which makes it an extraordinary tale.

One person found this helpful

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donr

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2017

okay

Hard to find in paper.

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2019

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Fair condition at a fair price.

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016

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Good series

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Gilberto Villahermosa

Story Telling a it's Best!

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2014

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A powerful historical novel, well written with compelling characters and a strong story line. Unlike too many Kindle books, it was meticulously edited.

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Selene

The broadsword and the sabre; the extraordinary adventures of Thomas Keith.

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2014

From the turbulent Ottoman Empire of the early 19th century comes a rousing tale of political intrigue and shifting tribal allegiances, desert warfare, heroism and the brotherhood of arms, as the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain spill over into the Middle East.

Published in 1987, the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of Thomas Keith, a young Scottish soldier who becomes the Emir or Governor of the holy Islamic city of Medina, has all the hall-marks of classic Sutcliff - it's written in her inimitable vivid and evocative style and woven round a central partnership of two young men who are both sword-brothers and heart-brothers; Keith himself and Tussum Bey, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Wāli of Egypt. Why then, does it lack the conviction of better known Sutcliff novels like "Lantern Bearers", "Sword at Sunset" or "Mark of the Horse Lord"?

"Blood and Sand" is an adult novel and readers may be taken aback by some relatively frank (for Sutcliff) sex scenes ("Had immoral parts. Don't read!", cries a clearly traumatised Goodreads reviewer.) This isn't as much of an issue for me as Sutcliff's introduction of a couple of extraneous female characters who add a jarring note of overblown melodrama - the sexually predatory Lady Nayli and Anoud, the gentle innocent who becomes Keith's wife. Sutcliff struggles to find a point of connection with female characters, and in her adult novels they are stereotypically either dangerous, like Nayli, or like Anoud, act purely as moon to a male hero's sun. Sutcliff comments herself that there is no record of Keith marrying, and that a stray romantic impulse prompted her to give him a happy marriage. She should have resisted that impulse - any real passion and depth in this novel lies in the interaction between her male characters.

Sutcliff freely acknowledges Scottish historian and educationist Michael Starforth as having given her the story of Thomas Keith. Herein, I discovered, lies the answer to the curiously dissonant feel of "Blood and Sand". Starforth didn't just give her an inspiration - he actually wrote this story first. Starforth's specialty was Middle Eastern affairs and he had spent a good deal of time working on a novel based on Thomas Keith's extraordinary adventures called "A Broadsword for Islam", but couldn't find a publisher for it. He gave the draft to Sutcliff who adapted it and subsequently published it, with Starforth's blessing, under her own name as "Blood and Sand". This is a graft that hasn't quite taken, a tale of two very different styles in uneasy co-existence - imagine an austerely masculine living room decorated with a profusion of colourful silken curtains and embroidered cushions and you'll get the idea.

Anything written by Sutcliff is well worth reading and Thomas Keith's fascinating and at times moving story showcases her abilities to recreate stirring battles and gift the reader a vibrant and visceral experience of a particular time and place. Unlike Roman Britain or ancient Greece, though, this just isn't her own particular time or place.

13 people found this helpful

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Patrick Flanagan

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2015

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Great

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Sahibzada Rabbani

A Scot Governor of Saudi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2022

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Sutcliff’s ‘Blood & Sand’ explores the life of the scotsman Thomas Keith (Ibrahim Agha) who was captured in Egypt. He converts to Islam, taking a lead role in Muhammad Ali Pasha’s army (Ottoman Govenver and defacto Ruler of Egypt) and in 1814 is appointed the Governor of Medina. Sutcliff, meticulously writes the story of Thomas. She thanks Michael Stardorth for giving her the story of Thomas and helping her shape this story. I couldn’t find anything about Michael Stardorth or how he came across the life of Ibrahim Agha.
Thomas Keith was from Edinburgh and apparently had studied at Leith Academy and was part of the British expedition in Egypt fighting in the Napleonic wars. He was captured and introduced to Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt. He becomes very close to Muhammad Ali’s son Tussun, and joined him in the Jihad against the early Saudi uprising in Hejaz. The book narrates how Ibrahim Agha courageously fought the forces of Abdullah Ibn Saud (d. 1818, who was put to death by the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II for his rebellion).
Thomas’ conversion to Islam as Ibrahim is fascinating. ‘Was there so much difference between his own faith and Islam? So much of the religion he saw practised about him seemed familiar to his Presbyterian (Protestant) upbringing: the simplicity and lack of ceremonial, the exclusion of graven images, the concept that no priesthood should come between man and his God. Any Muslim of good character, he had learned, could lead the prayers in the Mosque, though in practise it was generally a teacher, a man who had taken it up for his life’s work.’ Thomas is described as a practising Muslim, giving up alcohol & pig meat whereas many of Muhammad Ali’s entourage enjoyed alcohol.
Thomas was in great awe when he saw the Prophet’s Green Dome for the first time, exclaiming, ‘Even the Wahhabis have not quit dared to pull this down.’
In his last speech to his soldier, Thomas says,
My comrades-in-arms, you who are my friends and my brothers, in less than half an hour we shall charge the Wahhabi war host, and unless it should come to pass by some miracle that Tussun Pasha is close behind them, we shall charge them alone, and in doing so, pass by the shortest, but also the surest way to Paradise.’
We fight in the name of the Prophet, against those who have trampled down his people and desecrated his tomb; therefore let each of us set our hearts to sending four, even five of these heretics to Eblis, before we ourselves come to the gates of Paradise.’
‘Oh my brothers, charge! For Ali Ibn Talib!
Ibrahim Agha tastes martyrdom as Tussun’s army doesn’t get there in time.
The only fictional part of the book is his wife Anound, as Sutcliff remarks, ‘I felt that he deserved a happy marriage, no matter how brief, and so I gave him Anound with my love.’
To what extent is this is all true? It seems accurate. I’m hoping to read the other 4 books that mention Thomas Keith (Ibrahim Agha). Sutcliff’s insight into Islam, its practises, the region of Hijaz etc. are pretty accurate. Unlike other western writers who have made basic mistakes suggesting Muslims prostrated in funeral prayer or prayed 4 units of Jumah Fardh.
So the next time you visit the blessed city of Medina Sharif, remember a Scot gave up his life saving the City!

One person found this helpful

Walter Dominie

Good Read

Reviewed in Canada on March 24, 2018

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Excellent book.I really enjoyed it and recommend it to military history readers.

David Auric

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on April 13, 2018

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Excellent

Ms. Katherine J. Taylor

I enjoyed its description of desert life and an interesting era

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2015

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An interesting story based on real life characters and events about a British soldier of the Napoleonic era, Thomas Keith, who was captured fighting in Egypt and then converted to Islam and entered the service of Mohammed Ali of Egypt rising to be Acting Governor of Medina. I enjoyed its description of desert life and an interesting era. Plenty of romance and adventure.It's interesting to read about the divisions within Islam at that date with the echoes of today. Warning the ending may upset you.

8 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Two Stars

Reviewed in Canada on March 27, 2018

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Ending was not as I expected.

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