Marrakesh has a wonderful crafts tradition, and the tourist industry has given it new blood, but there's an awful lot of tat about, so do give anything that catches your eye a good once-over for quality.

When shopping in the souk, except for everyday items such as groceries, you're expected to haggle. This is something of an art, and you'll find some advice on it here.

A few words of caution

If buying anything like fossils or antiques, even saffron or argan oil, BEWARE: a lot of things posing as genuine are in fact what's called traffika, meaning phoney goods – the very fact that Moroccan Arabic has its own word for it tells you something already. Shops catering specifically for tourists are the worst.

Most of the fossils sold in Marrakesh are fakes – particularly anything black or brown on a grey background – but they're often very good, and can be hard to tell from the real thing. Polished black marble with fossils in it (from Rissani) is usually genuine however.