Al-Shihr (Arabic: ٱلشِّحْر, romanized: al-Shiḥr), also known as ash-Shir or simply Shihr,[1] is a coastal town in Hadhramaut, eastern Yemen.

[1] Ibn Khurradādhbih calls the area around al-Shihr the bilād al-kundur, Land of Incense.

About 1150, al-Idrīsī wrote that Sharma and al-Shihr were stopovers on the sailing route from Aden to Mirbāṭ and were about one day apart.

[9] Mustafa Bey left al-Shihr in December 1530 while Khoja Zufar remained with Badr.

[10][11][12][13][14][15] In 1548[16] Dom Álvaro arriving from Goa had it bombarded, albeit with meager results, as he lacked heavy artillery and around 40 Portuguese were killed.

Sometime later two large galliots arrived with siege guns, with which the Portuguese were able to batter the walls of the fort heavily, and within a short time, the garrison sent Sulaimân bin Sa'd bin Sulaimân al-Muhammadï who sought to surrender in exchange for freedom, The fort was stormed on April 7 and the Kathiri garrison was entirely slaughtered.

[17] Later, al-Shihr became one of the three major cities of the Qu'aiti Sultanate, before a unified Yemen was formed, the other two being Mukalla and Shibam.