diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index a18395da660..4ce7553a75b 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -223,6 +223,8 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
                (Kannan Muthukkaruppan via Stack)
    HBASE-2063  For hfileoutputformat, on timeout/failure/kill clean up
                half-written hfile (Ruslan Salyakhov via Stack)
+   HBASE-2281  Hbase shell does not work when started from the build dir
+               (Alexey Kovyrin via Stack)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1760  Cleanup TODOs in HTable
diff --git a/bin/hbase b/bin/hbase
index ebd09d8bea5..ca916d3abd9 100755
--- a/bin/hbase
+++ b/bin/hbase
@@ -99,6 +99,19 @@ if [ -d "$HBASE_HOME/build/webapps" ]; then
   CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}:$HBASE_HOME/build
 fi
 
+# Add maven target directory
+if [ -f $HBASE_HOME/pom.xml ]; then
+  HBASE_VER=`grep '<version>' $HBASE_HOME/pom.xml | head -1 | sed 's/.*<version>\(.*\)<\/version>/\1/'`
+  MAVEN_TARGET_DIR=$HBASE_HOME/target/hbase-$HBASE_VER-bin/hbase-$HBASE_VER
+  if [ -d "$MAVEN_TARGET_DIR" ]; then
+    for f in $MAVEN_TARGET_DIR/*.jar $MAVEN_TARGET_DIR/lib/*.jar; do
+      if [ -f $f ]; then
+        CLASSPATH=${CLASSPATH}:$f;
+      fi
+    done
+  fi
+fi
+
 # For releases, add hbase & webapps to CLASSPATH
 # Webapps must come first else it messes up Jetty
 if [ -d "$HBASE_HOME/webapps" ]; then