In 1959, he was commissioned to construct a major public monument, The Monument to the Unknown Soldier, which was later destroyed by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government, and replaced with a statue of Hussein himself. Chadirji's monument, centrally located in Baghdad's Ferdous Square, referenced Iraq's tradition, the monument evoked the parabolic arch from the Sassanid Palace, Ctesiphon. Described as a simple, symbolic, modernist structure,[11] sketches of the design concept found at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, reveal the inspiration for the design which represents a mother bending over to pick up her martyred child.[12]