Printed in Calcutta, it was a compendium of eight volumes published separately between 18. The book was titled Kasasol Ambia (Stories of the Prophets). Sitting on the floor, I set out to decipher Bengali characters I had not read for years. Turning the first few pages revealed it was not a Quran, but a 500-page volume of Bengali Sufi poetry. Among letters, a peacock feather fan and bottles of scent from Delhi, the large book lay, bearing a handwritten English label: “The Holy Koran”.

As I searched the shelves of the mosque for the book, a winter dust storm was underway outside. In 1989, Stevens reproduced a photo of the book in her history of the “Afghan cameldrivers”. Dusting the book free of sand, they placed it inside the mosque, labelling it as “The Holy Koran”. In the 1960s, long after the end of the era of camel transportation, when members of the Broken Hill Historical Society were restoring the mosque on the corner of William Street and Buck Street, they found a book in the yard, its “pages blowing in the red dust” in the words of historian Christine Stevens.

The numbers of camel merchants and drivers fluctuated with the arrival and departure of goods, and by the turn of the 20th century an estimated 400 South Asians were living in Broken Hill. As mining firms funnelled lead, iron ore and silver from Wiljakali lands to Indian Ocean ports and British markets, Broken Hill became a busy industrial node in the geography of the British Empire.

Bangla name book