Samie Bashir Safar was a professor of surgery at the University of Baghdad. He was born in Mosul, Iraq, on 2 February 1943, the son of Bashir Safar, a pharmacist, and Sabria Safar née Al-Aswad. He studied medicine at Mosul Medical School, which at that time was part of Baghdad University, and qualified in 1964. After resident posts in Mosul, he went to the UK for further training and gained fellowships from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of England, Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1975 he returned to Iraq, where he was appointed as a consultant surgeon at the main teaching hospital in Baghdad and as an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Baghdad. His research interests included hydatid disease and endocrine tumours, especially of the parathyroids. He was subsequently appointed professor of surgery. In 2000 he returned to the UK and worked as a locum general and breast surgeon in Norfolk, Harlow, Newham and Medway until 2010. Outside medicine he was an expert violinist and oud player. In 1972 he married Evelyn Mackasha, who was also a doctor. They had a son (a colorectal surgeon), a daughter and four grandsons. Samie Bashir Safar died on 27 May 2014 from metastatic prostatic carcinoma. He was 71.