[الدكتور أحمد باذيب]

	Shibam. Looking up at the face of a recent house, built forty years ago. No other town in Hadramawt is built so compactly or of such high houses as Shibam. A clue to the reason for this may be seen in the town plan, where streets which are more or less parallel cross each other at right angles. This kind of plan is likely to be the result of careful designing, probably at the time when the remaining available land of the city had to be reallocated after the disastrous flooding of the years 1298 (698) or 1532 (939). We know that in both cases the destruction of houses was widespread, and the present form of the city probably represents a consolidation of all the habitations on to the highest ground. Thenceforth the only possible expansion was upwards.