A visual artist regrets the looting of his library

They Stole his Mind .
A visual artist regrets the looting of his library

Sudan Events – Magda Hassan

In what resembles an obituary, the visual artist Saif al-Din Hassan Babakir wrote about the RSF plundering his house, and expressed his sorrow over the complete plundering of his library, which he summarized in his sentences (They stole my mind)before enumerating the rare contents of his library.
He said, “My library was completely looted. More than one thousand five hundred books from the major Arabic books, at the forefront of which is “Ibn Khaldun’s Introduction,” a rare edition dating back to the year 1830 from Paris. The Collection of Songs, Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali. The Al-Muthanna Collection by Maulana. Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, and the works of Shams al-Tabrizi.
A rare edition of Omar Khayyam’s collection in Arabic, a gift from a dear one, decorated with gold water. And another in Persian that she bought from Moscow in 1983 (a rare masterpiece).
All the collections of the Mu’allaqat poets, as well as Al-Mutanabat and Abu Nawas.”
He added, “As for the Greek mythology: The Iliad and The Odyssey in Arabic, with other editions in English, and The Reproduction of Creatures by Ovides, The Renaissance, 3 parts.”
He goes on to say, “As for the great contemporary Arab writers, particularly in the field of the novel, almost all of their works, particularly the collection of Tayeb Salih, Mohamed al-Mansi Qandil, Wasini al-Araj, Eliva Shafak, and Ahlam Mosteghanemi, the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Pasternak, the first edition of The Ebony Forest by Salah Ahmed Ibrahim 1959, collections of Taj Al-Sir Al-Hassan, My Generation Abdul Rahman, and a first edition of the collection of Ishraqa Al-Tijani, Yusuf Bashir, all the collections of Mohamed Al-Fitouri, The Road to Parliament, first edition, 1948, Ismail Al-Azhari,
“The History of My Life” by Sheikh Babakir Badri, 1959, first edition, 3 parts, a gift from his granddaughter, the honorable Medina Al-Sadiq Ahmed Babakir Badri, works by Hassan Najila, My Memories in the Desert. “The Fire of the Paddles”, by Mohamed al-Mahdi Majzoub, first edition 1962, accompanied by drawings by the great artist Ibrahim al-Salahi, “My Nation” by Mohamed al-Makki Ibrahim, “Some Nectar for Me and the Orange for You,” works by Abdulaziz Baraka Sakin.
He added, “Of course, there are many Arabic books, but there are hundreds of books in English and French.”
He revealed that the library contains records from the 1930s and a “Bay Mobile” radio set dating back to 1929 (in good condition, along with a “pick-up” and a huge collection of records from the era of Marvin Gaye, Roberta Fallaq, Steve Wonder, and Bob Marley… in addition to many archaeological documents and collectibles.. “They stole my mind.