The United Arab Emirates dirham

Dubai is the very symbol of the United Arab Emirates and the opulence of this country that has become rich thanks to oil, and that shows it off ostentatiously to the work with its skyscrapers reaching record-breaking heights, its ski slope in the middle of the desert and its shopping centers that welcome tourists from all over the world. As another symbol of the Emirates, the dirham started in 1973, the year of the oil crisis, when the «Arab princes» started to get rich right under the nose of Western countries.

The United Arab Emirates dirham should not be confused with the Moroccan dirham, even though it comes from the same Greek word, «drachma». Unlike neighboring currencies such as the dinar in Bahrein, the dinar in Kuwait and Iraq, the dirham is subdivided into 100 fils (as opposed to 1000 for dinars). The «fils» is the Arabic word for silver or money. For information, the plural of «fils» is «fulûs», which is origin of the French slang word «flouze».

The dirham is in circulation only in this region of the country, although the inhabitants won’t refuse to take the good old greenback as a means of payment