In coffee-crazy Arab Gulf, a pricey pursuit of the perfect pot

At a cluster of nondescript garage-like shops in this northern Saudi city, customers pick up and inspect the objects of their desire, the rarest of which can be worth as much as a brand-new car.

These shops have no website, no Facebook or Instagram pages, no Google business profiles, not even phone numbers. If you are a collector or simply serious about your coffee, you know.

“If you like coffee, you are going to like coffeepots. And if you want the perfect coffeepot, you have to come here,” says Ibrahim, a customer who made the six-hour drive up from Riyadh. “Everyone knows this is the place for dalleh.”

Despite the lack of marketing, business is always brewing at Hail’s Souq al-Dallal, the largest coffeepot market in the Middle East, where craftsmen forge some of the last handmade copper pots in all of Arabia.

In the coffee-crazy Arab Gulf, where Arabic coffee is a daily and sometimes daylong ritual gathering friends and honoring guests, this symbol of identity and hospitality can carry a luxury price tag. It is a price many Saudis are more than happy to pay.

The dalleh – plural dallal – is the iconic Arab coffeepot, with a round base, curved neck, and ornate spout, found in markets and homes across the Middle East. It is ubiquitous in the Gulf, where it is placed prominently in guest rooms and features on Emirati and Kuwaiti currency like a founding father.

On a Monday morning, customers line up at this market for dalleh repairs and refurbishing as craftsmen offer to buff away char, sand out scratches, and fashion replacement lids and handles.

Amid banging hammers and whirring machines, owners anxiously watch craftsmen pound out dents and polish their cherished coffeepots like Ferrari owners at a body shop.

Abdullah al-Shammari waits for a worker to finish polishing his heirloom set of five Hail coffeepots, a yearly tuneup to clean off 365 days’ worth of soot and coal ash from his daily campfire brews.

“A dalleh coffeepot is a must-have item in any Saudi house, and here in Hail it is part of our daily life,” Mr. Shammari says as he anxiously peers over the worker’s shoulders. “We use the dalleh more than our mobile phone.”

“The coffeepot is a symbol of our values,” he says, nodding approvingly at his pots’ shiny golden sheen. “It means we are hospitable and always ready to serve a cup of coffee to a guest or a stranger to talk and share.”

Meanwhile, a dozen Kuwaiti and Qatari customers browse packed shelves of used pots, on the lookout for a genuine dalleh made by one of the masters: Ibrahim Raslan, Mehdi Saleh, or Hussein Mazaal.

While some rummage for hidden gems, well-heeled customers head straight to the Hail National Dallal Workshop, owned by Ibrahim Radini, for a bespoke handmade coffeepot.

Like clockwork, the company’s four workers pound, flame-torch, and cool sheets of copper in various shapes as they produce the base, neck, spout, and lid of the next custom-ordered dalleh.

Hail is far from the historical centers of Arab copper coffeepot production – Damascus, Aleppo, and Baghdad – where the art form dates back three centuries.

When Mr. Radini’s father decided to revive Saudi Arabia’s own coffeepot production 50 years ago, his goals were modest.

“Dallal are a big part of our identity and daily life, but we kept importing from other countries and waited weeks for their arrival,” says Mr. Radini.

“My father said, ‘Why don’t we produce our identity here in Saudi Arabia?’”

The elder Radini recruited top coppersmiths in India and Pakistan, whose sons carry on the craft in the workshop today, producing stainless steel-lined copper pots.

Yet the significance of this workshop has grown beyond Saudi Arabia in recent years as the traditional Arab centers of coppersmiths have declined. 

Most of Iraq’s artisan coppersmiths gave up the trade over three decades of sanctions and war. The violence of the Syrian civil war destroyed Aleppo’s historic Al-Madina Souk and scattered most of the remaining Syrian coppersmiths there.

The handful of remaining dallal makers in Damascus now rely on machinery to mass-produce their coffeepots and use a lower grade of copper – often mixed with tin and zinc – due to inflation and sanctions.

If you want a new handmade Arab coffeepot, Mr. Radini’s workshop is one of the last places in the world to get it.

But it will cost you.

The smallest coffeepot they make runs to $2,000; larger ones go for more than $10,000.

Like any collector’s item, one dalleh is never enough. Saudis and Gulf citizens use at least three coffeepots to make Arabic coffee: one pot for boiling water, the second to brew coffee, and the third, smallest pot for serving. A set of five, including an extra jumbo-size pot, makes a statement.

Some are willing and eager to spend thousands on just the right bespoke handmade pieces to place on their mantel to impress – and then serve – guests.

With the workshop only able to produce one set of five coffeepots a week, there is a monthslong waiting list.

“People spend money on luxury clothes and watches, but you are never going to gather friends and guests around a watch,” Mr. Radini says. “That is why for many people, true handmade coffeepots are worth the investment.”

“For some people, dallal are bigger status symbols and more important than a car,” adds Mr. Shammari.

And the Rolls-Royce of Arab coffeepots? That would be the qureishi, or qasr, a distinctive design made only in Hail.

Legend has it this design was born in the 19th century when the ruler of what was then the Hail emirate, Abdullah bin Rashid, commissioned an artisan to make a unique set of coffeepots for the royal household “unlike any other in the world.”

The craftsman, who had traveled frequently to Baghdad and Damascus, incorporated design elements from different pots: a round base à la Baghdad, an elongated Arabian Peninsula neck, and a long Damascene spout.

He went heavy on the decor, engraving rows of intricate checkered triangles and adding solid copper symbols: cardamom pods, cloves, and a long vertical coffee bean below the spout – all key ingredients of Arabian coffee.

It takes Mr. Radini’s craftsmen an entire month to produce one qureishi dalleh.

Today, a set of five qureishi coffeepots will set you back $36,000.

But don’t let the sticker shock fool you; the last Arab coffeepot makers’ future is far from certain.

Copper prices have nearly doubled over the past eight years: A global run on copper, driven by the rising demand for electric cars and solar panels – a shortage compounded by the Ukraine war – has led to dalleh price hikes.

The handmade Arab dalleh is increasingly becoming a luxury item beyond the means of middle-class Saudis, who opt instead for affordable mass-produced stainless steel dallal from India, Indonesia, and South Korea, priced between $30 and $50 each.

Mr. Radini says he will continue forging coffeepots as long as there’s copper and coffee.

“We Saudis know hospitality and we know coffee,” he says as he holds a half-finished pot up to the light. “A coffeepot is not just kitchenware. It is a part of who we are.”