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Our Story

A house named caravan.

قافِلة

Gafla — caravan in Arabic. A contemporary fine‑jewellery house in Dubai, gathering the symbols of Arabian tradition and carrying them forward, slowly, intentionally.

Publicly launched
2015
Designed in
Dubai · d3
Active story lines
7
Live catalogue
137 pieces

The Arabic word gafla describes a caravan in motion — a procession of trade, story, and slow company that once moved across the peninsula. The house borrowed the word for a reason: jewellery, in this part of the world, has always been an inheritance‑in‑transit, passing from a grandmother's wrist to a granddaughter's, gathering stories as it goes.

Gafla was publicly launched in 2015 by founders who came together around Emirati heritage and modern jewellery design — Hamad Bin Shaiban and Abdulla Beljafla, with press history naming Bushra bint Darwish among the early founding team. The first studio sat inside Dubai Design District, and that is still where the house draws its lines today.

"Each piece reinvents the countless stories and symbols of Arabian traditions, for the international collector."
— Gafla, on its own work

The work is organised into seven living lines — Bahar, Hiam, Sak, Fanoos, Salasil, Merwad, Thumani — each one taking a single Emirati or wider Arabian motif and worrying it slowly into wearable form. Pearling in Bahar. The Ottoman lira in Sak. The lantern in Fanoos. The chain itself in Salasil.

What unites them, beyond gold and stone, is the pace. Gafla works with hand drawings, with the Majlis as a meeting place, with the long lead times of a piece that was never meant to be disposable. The Bespoke service runs alongside the collections, translating a private idea — a marriage, an inscription, a returned child — into a single fine‑jewellery object.

The Founders
Hamad Bin Shaiban
Co‑founder · Managing Director

Steward of the house's commercial and operational life, from the Majlis to the boutique partnerships at Tryano and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Abdulla Beljafla
Co‑founder · Creative Director

Leads the design language of every line — the motifs, the drawings, and the slow conversion from sketch to setting.

Press history — Harper's Bazaar Arabia and Arab News have profiled the early founding team as including Bushra bint Darwish. The official Our Story page currently names Hamad and Abdulla.

The Timeline

A caravan, in five staging posts.

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