Gold Souk Dubai

This post is a brief description of the Gold souk in Dubai.Gold souk is in the heart of  Dubai. It faces the Dubai creek and is approximately a 20 minutes drive from the Dubai airport. For someone coming directly from the airport by metro should get off at the AL RAS metro station. You will need to change from Red line to green line at the Union station.

The Gold souk is a market where mainly gold jewelry is sold in all its various forms. Finished products of jewelry, gems, unset jewelry, workshops, manufacturing, all is done in the gold souk. You will find diamond jewelry, precious stone jewelry, plain gold jewelry, bars, coins, designer jewelry, branded jewelry, jewelry produced locally and internationally. Gold souk is one of the main hubs for gold jewelry trading and retailing.

All karat-age of jewelry is sold: 14KT, [ not commonly though], 18kt,21kt , 22kt, 24 kt. Gold comes in white gold, rose gold, yellow gold, white gold, copper colored and all various colors including green. Usually this colored gold in is 18kt purity. [ Gold is colored by changing the percentage of alloys mixed in gold but maintains the 18KT purity of gold.] When buying such jewelry always look for the 750 or 18kt mark or ask the sales person to show you the purity marking.


The jewelry stores sell a vast variety of jewelry. Besides gold  jewelry, there are stores selling luxury watches, second hand watches, certified diamonds, loose gemstones and un-setted jewelry [jewelry without stones for other jewelers to buy] and silver jewelry.

There are shops in the gold souk that will exchange your old gold jewelry against your new purchase. Some will purchase for cash [ very few] . The stores that purchase jewelry against cash, usually ask for receipt and contact details to prevent fraud and reselling of robbed jewelry. So make sure you ALWAYS retain your jewelry receipts.

Besides being the heart of jewelry stores, the area around gold souk has plenty to offer locals and tourists. From the famous spice souk where a dearth of loose spices are to be found to stores selling cloth , perfumes, oud, cutlery and crockery stores, stationery, scarves, abayas, electronic stores, laces, toys, footwear ..and the list goes on. The Gold souk area has plenty to offer everyone.

If you get tired of looking around there are plenty of small cafeterias and famous shawarma booths to be found at nearly every corner. Do try their cocktail and fresh juices too. There is also a Baskin Robbins to be found in the Gold souk. This is in fact one of the first few Baskin Robbin shop that opened in Dubai and is roughly 20 years old or more.

Do not forget to pay for your parking it is 2 Dirhams for one hour, 5 Dirhams for two hours, 7 dirhams for three. hours and 11 Dirhams for four hours.

If you are in an adventurous all out exploration mood you can walk to the creek, take the famous abra [boat] ride , cross the creek and explore the opposite side called Bur Dubai.....

Hope you enjoyed reading this post. I would love to answer any questions you may have about the gold souk....

Thank you :)

Metal Purity

Ever noticed how your piece of jewellery usually has some sort of numerical marking in a discreet place? Well that marking carries a little value. It tells you how pure your gold is,or is supposed to be. These are also called ' hallmarks'

• 999 or 995 means 24 karat gold
• 917 or 920 means 22 karat gold
• 875 is 21 karat gold
• 750 is 18 karat gold
• 583 is  14 karat gold.

Jewellery in Dubai is pretty safe to buy in Dubai and that's one of the reasons why its Gold Souk is so famous. Of course the variety and competitive prices are other factors. The Dubai Municipality has set rules and regulations for selling jewellery and they make sure that they are adhered to. A municipal official can come unannounced to a jewellery store and take random pieces of jewellery for purity checking. If the claimed purity differs from the actual purity result, the store is heavily fined and can be shut down as well.  

Therefore jewelers ensure that the goods they are receiving are of the purity they are selling it. Yet some instances do occur where upon selling a piece of jewellery or getting it tested for purity the customer finds out that the jewellery item is not of the purity they thought/purchased it as. Unfortunately these rare instances the jeweller is not always to blame, though they ensure [by testing ] pieces that their jewellery is of the purity they are selling it at, the goldsmith who actually manufactured the jewellery may have lessened the purity accidentally or intentionally. Thus, in some scenarios the jewellers are also unaware of the wrong purity. Though that does not excuse them.

 Usually jewellers do get random items tested upon purchasing jewellery or if the manufacturing is their own, they will be quite sure of what the purity of their item is. No reputed supplier, goldsmith or jeweller will cheat this way, since this affects reputation in the long run and they lose out on potential customers.

So when you go jewellery shopping next time make sure your pieve of jewellery is stamped with its respective purity. Rings and bangles usually carry the hallmark on the inside [ you must really strain your eyes to find it] and the earrings are stamped usually on the back of the earring or on the post of the earring.

Will post some reference pics soon :)

Hope you find this post helpful.

Thank you :)

Coversion and purity

Todays post is about common terms and conversions used in The gold and jewellery trade.
I may not be able to cover all in one go , thus will keep updating this post InshaAllah :)

Usually gold / silver websites such as www.kitco.com publish the gold rates in U$ Dollars for an ounce of gold.

Example if the rate is published as U$ 1667 this is for one ounce of gold.
One ounce is equal to 31.10 grams.
In Dubai [ Middle east and most Asian countries] Gold rate is usually converted to grammes.

To convert to grams , ounce gold rate by 31.10 and then multiply by 3.65 to get the rate in U.A.E dirhams.

so (1667/31.1)*3.65 = 195.64 AED dirhams per gram.

The result is for PURE GOLD i.e 999.

This rate will be applied if you are going to buy a gold bar or Kilo Bars. Do bear in mind even for manufacturing Gold bars there are charges since their is labour involved in manufacturing them. These rates differ from company to company.

Jewellery pieces are usually manufactured in 22KARAT gold, 21 karat gold , 18 karat gold and sometimes [ applicable to U.A.E] in 14karat as well.

So, going back to our 999 gold rate which is also known as PURE GOLD. Since it has no other gold metals added to it and is pure gold.

To convert pure gold rate to 22kt gold rate take the pure gold rate and multiply by 0.920 and for 18KT rate multiply by 0.750.
so eg if pure gold rate is 195.64 x 0.920 = 179.99 or rounded off 180 AED.
FOR 18KT            195.64 X 0.750 = 156.73 or rounded off 157 AED

One ounce has 31.10 grams
One Ten Tola bar has 116.64 grams
one tola has 11.664 grams

A bar of equal weight but purity of 999 or 995 will differ in price.
999 will be more expensive than 995.

Hope this post was helpful.
Would love your feed back.
Thankyou.