The Dhow Wharfage: Where Old Dubai Still Loads Cargo by Hand

Along the Deira bank of Dubai Creek runs the wharf where the wooden dhows tie up. This is the Dhow Wharfage, and the ships are not here for the photograph. They are working. DP World, which operates the Dubai Creek and Deira Wharfage, calls it a vital gateway for traditional dhow trade: forty-three berths, and over two million tonnes of goods a year carried by dhow to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, including smaller ports beyond the reach of conventional shipping. Which berths hold dhows on a given day, and what goes on their decks, changes from day to day; come and see. The story you already know about the city is vertical, new and made of glass. The wharfage tells the older story, and it is the argument this walk exists to make.

The whole city in one view

Stand at the wharfage and the two Dubais sit in a single frame. Behind the ships rise the towers, the city built in a single lifetime out of oil money. In front of you, wooden dhows tie up on a quay Dubai Municipality finished rebuilding in May two thousand and twenty-five: about two kilometers of this bank, with the retaining wall raised, room for five hundred berths and a new public promenade along the water. The crews who load, sail and unload are skilled working people doing hard work in the open heat, and they are the ones who keep this trade alive.

That is the payoff of the walk, and it frames the whole loop. The walk starts here, at the Al Sabkha abra station beside the wharf, and comes back to the creek wharf at the end. The stops between lay out how a pearling and re-export port on a saltwater creek, the khor that cuts the city in two, grew rich by moving other people's cargo onward after its ruler dropped customs duties in the early nineteen hundreds. When cultured pearls from Japan and the world slump ruined the pearl trade in the nineteen thirties, when oil arrived in the nineteen sixties, and when the United Arab Emirates was founded in nineteen seventy-one, that trading instinct did not vanish. It is still tied up at the quay.

Reading the souks toward the water

From the wharf the walk climbs to the Perfume Souk, where Eighteenth Street meets Al Soor Street, thick with three words worth learning: oud, a fragrant, resin-soaked wood sold as chips to burn or as an oil; attar, perfume oil sold by the drop; and bakhoor, incense of wood chips soaked in scent. Ask to smell the oud on a warmed strip and notice how it deepens over a minute rather than fades. Up a narrow alley stands the Women's Museum, Bait Al Banat, the House of Girls, founded by Rafia Obaid Ghubash and billed as the first women's museum in the Middle East.

Then comes the Gold Souk, a covered lane under a timber lattice roof on the edge of Al Ras and Al Daghaya, where window after window is a solid wall of gold. DMCC counts more than four hundred shops, and by the nineteen forties the lane was already known as the Gold Souk; Gulf News traces the trade's growth to the years after the pearl collapse, with gold moving to and from India. Dubai did not mine this gold. It moved it. The metal is priced against the daily international rate, so what you negotiate is the craftsmanship, not the gold. That single fact tells you what kind of city this always was: an entrepot, a port where goods land, change hands and sail on. At the souk's mouth begins Old Baladiya Street, closed to cars since Dubai Municipality turned it into a pedestrian street in February two thousand and twenty-four.

Then the lanes of Al Ras quiet down, and the walk turns inward. The Al Ahmadiya School is, in Dubai Culture's words, the first semi-formal private school in Dubai, founded in nineteen twelve by Sheikh Ahmed bin Dalmouk, one of the major pearl merchants of the Gulf. A pearl merchant chose to spend part of his fortune on teaching, and the school taught until nineteen fifty-eight; Dubai Culture names the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum among its first generation. On the corner stands the Heritage House, built in eighteen ninety by Matar Saeed bin Mazina, two floors of coral, stone, plaster, teak and palm round an inner courtyard, with diwans for receiving guests and barajeel, the wind towers that cool the rooms below. Both are closed for renovation, with no reopening date (Dubai Culture, November two thousand and twenty-six), so you read them from the lane. A few steps on is the house of the poet Mubarak bin Hamad Al Oqaili, built in nineteen twenty-three by builders he brought from Al Ahsa, in the east of the Arabian Peninsula. Hold the other half of the pearling story too: that wealth rested on the divers' hard and dangerous work, until in the nineteen thirties cultured pearls from Japan and the world slump ruined the pearl trade.

The Spice Souk lies between Baniyas Road and Sikkat Al Khail Road, behind the old municipality building. Dubai Municipality calls this market Souq Al Kabeer, dates it back to eighteen fifty, and counts more than eighty kinds of spice; its spice and remedy shops have their own name, Souq Al Dawiat. Khaleej Times put the shops at more than two hundred in two thousand and twenty-two, and one trader there said nine-tenths of its saffron comes from Iran, much of it to be sold on. Every smell is a trade route compressed into a few dozen shopfronts. At the end of Old Baladiya Street stands the old municipality building, where the town's municipality worked from nineteen fifty-seven to nineteen sixty-four, a wakalah with shops below and traders' rooms above. Just before the water, the Deira Old Souk abra station launches small wooden ferries across the Creek to the Bur Dubai abra station, one dirham a crossing, cash only (RTA, September two thousand and twenty-six). On this walk you stay on the Deira bank and watch the crossing rather than take it.

Walk it before the wharfage

By the time you reach the creek wharf at the end, you have earned the view. You have seen the gold, breathed the oud, stood at the door of a 1912 school, and watched the abras still doing their job. Straight across the creek lies the Al Fahidi quarter, the old town of wind towers that the Old Dubai walk goes through. The postcard city and the working city turn out to be the same city, and you will have walked from one into the other over eleven stops, about two point six kilometers, in about seventy-five minutes. The full route is the Roamer self-guided audio tour Deira Souks: Gold, Spice and the Abra Across the Creek, timed so GPS triggers each stop as you reach it; it is best from late afternoon into the evening, when the souks are lit and busy. The wharf has no shade, so bring water and a hat.

Plan the rest of your visit with our guide to Dubai walking tours, or browse everything on the Dubai city page.

Sources

• Dubai Creek and Deira Wharfage, DP World: official port operator description of the working dhow trade on Dubai Creek, its berths, tonnage and routes.
• "Dubai Municipality completes development of Dubai Creek," Dubai Media Office (18 May 2025): the rebuilt Deira-side wharf and its promenade.
• "History of gold," DMCC (14 December 2022), and "Tourists flock to Dubai's thriving Gold Souq," Gulf News (16 September 2018): shop count, the souk's early history and the gold trade with India.
• Old Municipal Street release (19 February 2024), Souq Al Kabeer and Dubai Municipality Museum pages, Dubai Municipality: the pedestrian street, the spice market and the old municipality building.
• "Museums of the UAE: Dubai Women's Museum," The National (25 September 2026), and Khaleej Times (30 August 2022) on the Spice Souq's saffron trade.
• Al Ahmadiya School, Dubai Culture: founding date of 1912, founder Sheikh Ahmed bin Dalmouk, the first semi-formal private school in Dubai, teaching until 1958, and its closure for renovation.
• Heritage House and Museum of the Poet Al Oqaili, Dubai Culture: the 1890 courtyard house of Matar Saeed bin Mazina, its materials and wind towers, its closure for renovation, and the poet's house of 1923.
• Abra routes and fares, RTA (September 2026): the CR1 crossing and its fare.