The medallion was given to my father, Sayed Husain Al Safar Al Hasani, on the 21st of July 1962, in appreciation for his services as an irrigation engineer. He was also given a medallion of King Faisal the 2nd on the occasion of the opening of a sugar factory in Mosul in the north of Iraq in 1958. In the same year, he was given another King Faisal the 2nd medallion to commemorate the opening of a housing project, which was part of a scheme run by the Ministry of Public Construction. For me, these medallions represent my father’s participation in the building of modern Iraq.

DR ALI AL HASSANI, born 1947, in London since 1974