Where to Shop for Spices and Arabic Perfumes: Souvenirs of Ras Al Khaimah
After doing the rounds of Ras Al Khaimah’s outdoor activities, tourist attractions, and restaurants, there’s one last thing you should…
After doing the rounds of Ras Al Khaimah’s outdoor activities, tourist attractions, and restaurants, there’s one last thing you should do. You must shop for souvenirs.
What souvenirs should you buy? Typical Ras Al Khaimah souvenirs include rugs, shawls, camel milk, pearls, lanterns, gold, and precious and semi-precious stones. We say, get all that, but don’t forget to shop for spices and Arabic perfumes, too.
Scents evoke memories and emotions more vividly than any other stimuli. It’s just how your brain is wired.
The information from your senses of touch, sight, hearing, and taste is indirectly conveyed to your brain’s memory center (i.e., the hippocampus) and emotion processing center (i.e., the amygdala) through a relay station called the thalamus. However, the brain treats scents differently.
What you smell goes straight to your brain’s smell center (i.e., the olfactory bulb), which is directly linked to your memory and emotion processing centers. Your brain’s smell center even has a component (i.e., the piriform cortex) that can be instructed to store long-term memories of scent-linked events.
Therefore, scents are closely linked to and are powerful triggers of memories and emotions. A whiff of saffron can bring to mind everything that happened the day you were served chabab for breakfast, including that day’s Jais Flight and the exhilaration you felt afterward. Likewise, the fragrance of an oud-based Emirati perfume can transport you to the perfume store that sold you the bottle, the happy time you spent shopping at Al Hamra Mall, and the general look, feel, and smell of Ras Al Khaimah.
The photos that you took of the spectacular Jebel Jais from the Jais Viewing Deck Park and the intricate patterns and velvety feel of that Emirati rug you got from the old market can trigger memories of Ras Al Khaimah, too. However, nothing is more potent than the smell of oud, saffron, cardamom, or whatever aroma made an impression on you during your Ras Al Khaimah vacation.
Takeaway: Smells can immediately jog your memories of Ras Al Khaimah and trigger the emotions you felt on your visit. Therefore, spices and perfumes make excellent vacation souvenirs.
Emirati cuisine is fragrant, hearty, and soulful with the signature aromas of herbs and spices, such as saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, bezar, turmeric, black pepper, sumac, cumin, ras el hanout, and coriander. Aside from these essential Emirati spices, garlic, peeled and dried lime (loumi), and thyme are also often featured in Emirati cooking.
You can cast a wider net and add the following spices commonly used in Middle Eastern cuisine to your shopping list:
You can find the above spices in a spice souq, a traditional open-air market where people buy and sell spices. It is lined with stall after stall displaying crates, bins, baskets, and sacks brimming with spices, herbs, nuts, dried fruits, and every imaginable ingredient from all corners of the Middle East, India, other parts of Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world.
You can find spice stalls in the Kuwaiti Souq of Ras Al Khaimah. Located in the old town or old quarter of Ras Al Khaimah, the Kuwaiti Souq is not just a spice market but also a preferred shopping destination for furnishings, textiles, jewelry, bakhoor, Emirati perfume, and accessories.
The Kuwaiti Souq is a feast for the senses. Shops selling brightly colored plates and intricately patterned shawls stand wall-to-wall with stores displaying crystal lamps and gilded clocks. Traversing the twisting streets and narrow alleys will prompt enthusiastic hawking calls from vendors. The entire market is also redolent of saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, and other aromatics, courtesy of the many spice stands as well as the food stalls selling machboos, shawarma, kababs, and falafel.
Takeaway: You can shop for Emirati spices from the Kuwaiti Souq in the old part of Ras Al Khaimah. The smell of these spices permeating your kitchen will take you back to the souqs and the best restaurants in Ras Al Khaimah.
Perfumes are deeply ingrained in Arab culture. While the Greeks invented perfumes, the Arabs contributed heavily to their development. They extracted, processed, and refined resins from wood, secretions from animal glands, and essential oils from flowers, grasses, and herbs. These aromatic compounds, they turned into attars with which they soaked wood chips to make bakhoor or to perfume their hair, body, home, and clothing.
Arabic perfumes have a signature smell due to their heavy base notes of resins (oud, frankincense), musk, and ambergris. They can also be quite intense since some perfume houses designate as middle notes scents that are typically used as base notes (e.g., oud, leather, cedar wood, vanilla, and musk).
You can detect the distinct scent of Emirati perfume everywhere in the United Arab Emirates, so buying one or more bottles of Arabic perfumes is an excellent way to remember your time in Ras Al Khaimah.
You can find the best Arabic perfume brands in Al Hamra Mall and Manar Mall.
Address: Sheikh Mohamed Bin Salem Road, Al Hamra Village, Ras Al Khaimah
Al Hamra Mall in Ras Al Khaimah is a two-story shopping complex with shops, restaurants, a prayer room, a movie theater, and children’s play centers. The following are Al Hamra Mall shops that represent homegrown Arabic and Emirati perfume brands:
Address: Al Muntasir Road, Dafan Al Nakheel, Ras Al Khaimah
Include Manar Mall in Ras Al Khaimah in your travel itinerary. This shopping center has high-street fashion brands, cinemas, play areas, jewelry stores, banks, a department store, and a Carrefour supermarket. Its mangrove-facing location also means a beautiful waterfront promenade and lovely sea views.
Manar Mall has many shops specializing in Arabic perfumes, including the following:
In addition to the above Arabic and Emirati perfume brands, Manar Mall has perfume distributors that carry various perfume brands. Marhaba Perfumes, with its extensive inventory of Arabic perfumes, is an example.
Takeaway: Al Hamra Mall and Manar Mall are your go-to places for the best Arabic perfume brands.
Scents are powerful emotion and memory triggers, so spices and perfumes — a ubiquitous part of the Emirati way of life — are keys that can unlock your happy memories of Ras Al Khaimah. Shop for spices at Kuwaiti Souq and Arabic perfumes at Manar Mall and Al Hamra Mall.
The Visit Ras Al Khaimah website is a project by the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority. We provide essential travel information visitors can use to pick the best hotels in Ras Al Khaimah and plan their travel itineraries. Explore our website to learn about the top attractions, restaurants, hotels, and things to do in Ras Al Khaimah.
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