If you're the sort of person who would like to look at exchange rates carefully before deciding on your holiday destination, then the U. A. E. is certainly worth your consideration now.

Really there's never been a better time for someone to buy UAE dirhams online so that you can go to this famous destination situated in the southeast of the Arabian Headland in Southwest Asia on the Persian Gulf, neighboring Oman and Saudi Arabia and sharing sea borders with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.

All time best rate

From a recent high of 6.1417 to the British pound in April 29th this year, by Sep 14th 2011 the UAE Dirham was exchanging at lows of 5.9711 to the pound. In other words the pound has appreciated against the Dirham by just about 3 per cent.

It is critical to understand this significant climb by comparing the performance of the Dirham to other major currencies, most significantly the US dollar. The UAE Dirham exchange rate against the US dollar has stayed nearly unchanged during the past 12 months or so. If we inspect it from a broader viewpoint, between 1988 and 2011 the US Dollar versus the UAE Dirham exchange rate averaged 3.67 peaking at highs of 3.68 in October 1993 and dipping to an all time low of 3.66 in July of 1992.

This is in sharp contrast to the buoyancy of the English pound against the UAE dirham.

What Does AED mean?

Really the generally used currency abbreviation for the U. A. E. Dirham is AED which stands for Arab Emirates Dirham. The dirham is made from 100 fuloos. Fuloos is in fact plural for fils. The symbol most widely used to represent this currency is Dhs or DH.

The U. A. E. Dirham isn't just the currency of Dubai but also of the other Emirates. Understandably Dubai is the most famed emirate due to the unique niche in world trading that this port has made for itself. However few Britons notice that the United Arab Emirates is neither a constitutional monarchy nor a republic but is rather a federation of 7 monarchies whose individual rulers retain unqualified power within their emirates. Usually the 7 emirs select one among themselves to be president of the federation. This is a vital piece of background info to help any person appreciate the wide acceptability of this currency over a rather wide area of jurisdiction.

History of the UAE Dirham

The dirham was in fact introduced in 1973 to replace one or two currencies that were being employed in the numerous Emirates at the time. For example the Dubai Riyal that was in use in Dubai at the time and the Qatar riyal which was the currency in bordering Qatar. On Jan 28th 1978 the dirham was officially fastened to the US greenback at one dollar to 3.6725 dirhams and as we have seen earlier in this article has solidly stayed nearly untouched.

Richard Jones is a regular traveller to Dubai. He's always curious about the most recent travel money exchnage rates and is glad that he found FairFX.