Blood and Sand

From Amazon.co.uk:
Blood and Sand
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 he 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.
From: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Sand-Rosemary-Sutcliff/dp/0340497424/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335148130&sr=8-1