Introduction:
College life is a critical transition stage through which young adults set out to discover tobacco use.

Objectives:
To identify students’ perception and practices towards Shisha smoking and factors influencing it.

Methods:
The study included 953 randomly chosen students form faculties of medicine and engineering using a structured questionnaire for data collection.

Results:
Ever Shisha smokers represented 26.1% of study participants, and 22.5% were current Shisha smokers. Current smokers among engineering students represented 43.6% compared to 3.8% of medical students. In faculty of engineering 51.3% of Shisha smokers reported smoking Shisha only compared to 42.1% among medical students. Smoking for two or more years was reported by 47.4% of medical students compared to 34.9% of engineering students. Traditional Café was the preferred place for shisha smoking for both medical and engineering students (68.4% & 63.6%, respectively). Peer pressures was cause for starting Shisha smoking (63.1%) followed by curiosity (29.4%), then entertainment (26.2%). Regarding reasons for continuing Shisha smoking, more than two thirds of participants reported "Anxiety or tension", followed by "Keeping pace with friends or relatives" (69.6% & 66.4%, respectively). Nearly two fifths (39.7%) of Shisha smokers tried to quit. Nearly two fifths (42.4%) couldn`t quit for more than one month, and 10.6% tried to quit for about one year but failed.

Conclusion:
Shisha smoking prevalence was relatively not high. Anti-smoking interventions and campaigns should be implemented for university students to keep it low.