Dubai Spice Souk

This guide to the Dubai Spice Souk in old Deira traces the market back to around 1850, when it grew up beside the dhow moorings so traders arriving from India, Iran and East Africa could unload cardamom, saffron, turmeric and incense without hauling it through the desert. It follows how that trade in frankincense and spices carried this stretch of the city before oil or property ever did, and lingers on the saffron piles where Persian and South Asian merchants once haggled in a mix of Arabic, Farsi and Hindi. Many of the stalls are still run by the same families who opened them.