Emirati Dirham

Emirati Dirham

The currency of the United Arab Emirates. It was introduced in 1971 upon the formation of the United Arab Emirates and their complete independence from Great Britain. Previously, both the Bahraini dinar and the Qatari riyal (then known as the Qatar-Dubai riyal) were used in what is now the UAE. While it was pegged to the IMF special drawing rights in 1978, the dirham has been pegged to the U.S. dollar unofficially for most of its history. The UAE officially pegged the dirham to the dollar in 1997.