Gold price in Iraq today: the mithqal, the karats, and ten years of the ounce
Iraq buys gold by the mithqal and by karat. This is how the world ounce turns into a Baghdad or Erbil price, what a mithqal of 21-karat costs today, and what the ounce has done since 2016.
Gold1,114,395+1.20% in Iraq is bought in a unit the rest of the world does not use and priced in a currency whose own rate moves every day. That is why the price on a Baghdad goldsmith’s sign and the price on a world market screen never look related, even though one is made from the other. This article walks the chain from the ounce to the mithqal, gives today’s reference prices by karat, and puts ten years of the ounce in one table.
The mithqal: five grams, four karats
The Iraqi retail unit is the mithqal, fixed at five grams. (The Iranian mesghal, 4.6083 grams, is a different unit with a similar name; do not mix them.) A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, so an ounce is 6.22 mithqals.
Four karats circulate: 24-karat for bars and coins, 22 in some jewellery, 21-karat as the everyday standard for wedding sets and bracelets across most of Iraq, and 18-karat for lighter, harder pieces. Karat is purity in twenty-fourths: 21-karat is 21/24, or 87.5 percent gold.
From the ounce to a Baghdad price
The chain has three links, and DinarView shows each of them.
- The world price: dollars per troy ounce, from a global spot feed updated hourly. On 3 September 2026 it was about $4,484.
- The dinar rate: DinarView’s collected market rate, 1,546.5 dinars per dollar the same day. An ounce was therefore 6.93 million dinars.
- The unit and the purity: divide by 31.1035 for a gram (222,965 dinars), multiply by five for a mithqal of pure gold (1,114,824 dinars), then scale by the karat.
| Karat | Purity | Dinars per gram | Dinars per mithqal | Dollars per mithqal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24-karat | 99.9% | 222,965 | 1,114,824 | 721 |
| 22-karat | 91.7% | 204,384 | 1,021,922 | 661 |
| 21-karat | 87.5% | 195,094 | 975,471 | 631 |
| 18-karat | 75.0% | 167,224 | 836,118 | 541 |
Reference prices derived on 3 September 2026 from $4,484 per ounce and 1,546.5 dinars per dollar1,588+0.52%. The live version updates hourly on the gold page.
These are reference numbers, not shop prices. A goldsmith adds two things on top: workmanship, which for a plain 21-karat bracelet in Baghdad or Erbil runs from a few thousand dinars per mithqal to far more for fine work, and a margin between the price he buys scrap at and the price he sells new pieces at. The reference is what the metal in the piece is worth; the sign in the window is that plus the making and the trade.
Ten years of the ounce
DinarView keeps a daily record of the world gold price back to August 2016. The yearly averages tell the story plainly: the ounce spent four years near $1,250, jumped in 2020, held around $1,800 for three years, and then rose without a pause.
| Year | Average $/oz | Low | High | Change on year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 (from August) | 1,248 | 1,127 | 1,350 | — |
| 2017 | 1,258 | 1,151 | 1,348 | +0.8% |
| 2018 | 1,269 | 1,174 | 1,355 | +0.9% |
| 2019 | 1,393 | 1,271 | 1,550 | +9.8% |
| 2020 | 1,771 | 1,473 | 2,070 | +27.1% |
| 2021 | 1,800 | 1,686 | 1,949 | +1.6% |
| 2022 | 1,803 | 1,626 | 2,045 | +0.2% |
| 2023 | 1,944 | 1,812 | 2,119 | +7.8% |
| 2024 | 2,390 | 1,992 | 2,786 | +22.9% |
| 2025 | 3,441 | 2,625 | 4,525 | +44.0% |
| 2026 (to early September) | 4,570 | 3,984 | 5,525 | +32.8% |
US dollars per troy ounce, from DinarView’s stored daily readings.
For an Iraqi buyer the dinar rate adds a second layer. A mithqal of 24-karat gold cost about 275,000 dinars in 2019 at the year’s average ounce and dinar rate; in early September 2026 it costs about 1,115,000. Roughly a fifth of that rise is the dinar weakening from about 1,190 to about 1,546 per dollar; the rest is the metal itself.
Why the sign in the window says something else
Three things separate the reference from the retail price.
- Workmanship. Charged per mithqal or per piece. A plain bangle carries little; a set with stones or filigree carries a great deal, and the stones are often priced separately.
- Buy and sell. A goldsmith buys scrap and old pieces below the reference and sells new pieces above it. The gap is his margin and is usually wider than a currency office’s spread on dollars.
- The dinar the shop uses. Most shops convert the ounce at that morning’s market rate, not the official rate; a few quote in dollars and let you pay in either.
Where the gold trade sits
In Baghdad the trade is on River Street and around the Shorja market; in Erbil in the Qaysari bazaar, where Bayar Golds, founded in 1983, is one of the few dealers publishing its prices in an app; in Sulaymaniyah in the goldsmiths’ row beside the currency souq; in Najaf around the Grand Bazaar. DinarView does not yet read a dealer’s board directly, which is why its gold figures are labelled as derived from the spot price; as dealers publish boards they will be added and named, exactly as the currency offices are.
Reading a gold price like a dealer
- Ask which karat and which unit a price is for. “Nine hundred and seventy-five thousand” on its own is a 21-karat mithqal today, but only today.
- Ask whether the price is buying or selling. The number you are quoted when you walk in with old gold is the buy side.
- Check the ounce and the dinar on the same morning. If the ounce is flat but the dinar moved, the mithqal moves with the dinar.
- Weigh it. A mithqal is five grams on any scale; a piece sold as “a mithqal” that weighs 4.8 grams is priced per gram, whatever the sign says.
Questions people ask
Is 21-karat or 24-karat the better buy?
For jewellery to wear, 21-karat: it is harder and holds a setting. For storing value, 24-karat bars and coins carry the least workmanship and the smallest dealer margin, so more of what you pay is metal.
Why did gold rise so much in 2024, 2025 and 2026?
Central banks bought heavily, real interest rates fell from their 2023 peak, and buyers in Asia and the Middle East treated gold as a hedge against currency weakness. DinarView reports the price; it does not forecast it, and nothing on this page is a prediction.
Does DinarView publish silver?
Yes, per ounce and per mithqal, on the same derived basis, on the rate board.
How often does the gold figure update?
The ounce is read hourly, and the dinar rate through the trading day. The page shows the time of its last reading, and the mithqal figures recalculate from both.
Today’s ounce, gram and mithqal by karat, with the time they were computed, are on the gold page.