Dubai Gold Souk

This guide to the Dubai Gold Souk traces the arcaded lanes of old Deira back to a decision made more than eighty years ago, when a small desert port began waiving import duties on gold and merchants from India and Iran noticed. It follows the trade through gold smuggling profits into an India where gold imports were banned, Sheikh Rashid's creek dredging in the late 1950s, and the oil-money boom of the 1970s that built the market into what stands today.