With its century-old, crowded, guard tower-like houses, some of them rising to seven storeys high, the Old City of Shibam is visible from afar right, towering in the midst of the Wadi Hadhramaut. It is completely surrounded by a wall. Even today, there is only one gate through which the city can be entered. The colour of the houses changes during the course of the day from pink to beige to yellow and brownish orange - this and the uniqueness of the city's silhouette has given Shibam the epithet "Al-Saffra" ("The Yellow One").
Today, roughly 48,000 people live in the new district of Shibam covering 1,117 km2; a good 3,000 of them live in the Old City. A census conducted in 2000 showed that of the formerly 7,000 inhabitants of the Old City more than half had left during the previous 30 years, mainly to move into the New City with its modern amenities or to leave for neighbouring countries. At this point, roughly 10% of the some 430 houses in the Old City had collapsed and a further 10% had been abandoned due to structural damage. Another 45% were in a poor condition. About half of the inhabitants of the Old City were tenants, while another 13% lived in houses owned by the Awqaf (an organisation administering religious endowments); the lack of decision-making scope this caused, the complicated ownership structure, altered demands for convenience, the decade-long neglect of the fragile building stock during the socialist era and the distinctly worsened economic conditions during the 1990s all contributed to the decline of the Old City.
