How our prayer times are calculated

Every time on Sunni One is worked out from the position of the sun at the city's own coordinates, for the city's own time zone, using the method its Sunni Muslims follow. Nothing is copied from another timetable. This page sets out each step, so you can check our times against your masjid's.

The astronomy

The sun's position comes from adhan, an open-source prayer-time library (MIT licence, version 4.4.6, pinned so that it cannot change without our review). Our tests check its sunrise, solar noon, Asr and sunset against an independent solar model (the NOAA equations) to within 45 seconds, and run the whole engine in five time zones to prove that a page computed on a server in Europe shows the same times as one computed in India.

What each time means

• Fajr begins at true dawn (subh sadiq), when the sun is a set angle below the eastern horizon: 18° in India and Pakistan, other angles elsewhere (see the table below).
• Sehri (suhoor) ends 5 minutes before true dawn, a precautionary margin (ihtiyat). The "Fajr begins" time is shown beside it.
• Sunrise ends the time of Fajr.
• Zuhr (Dhuhr) begins once the sun has passed its highest point (zawal).
• Asr is shown for both rules. In the Hanafi school it begins when an object's shadow is twice its length (plus its shadow at noon); in the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools, when the shadow equals its length. The school most local mosques follow is shown first.
• Maghrib and iftar are at sunset, shown 1 minute after the computed moment so that a fast is never broken early.
• Isha begins when the sun reaches a set angle below the horizon, or, under the Umm al-Qura and Qatar methods, 90 minutes after Maghrib.
• Islamic midnight is the midpoint between sunset and true dawn, and tahajjud the last third of that night.

Rounding: always towards the safe side

The astronomy gives times to the second; a timetable shows minutes. Rounding to the nearest minute could show Fajr 30 seconds before it begins, or the end of sehri 30 seconds after it has passed. So every start time (Fajr, Zuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha, Ishraq) is rounded up, and every end time (sehri, sunrise and the starts of the disliked windows) is rounded down.

Times when prayer is disliked (makruh)

• From sunrise until 20 minutes after it, when Ishraq begins.
• At midday: in South Asia from Dahwa-e-Kubra (the midpoint between true dawn and sunset) until zawal, the reckoning printed on many Hanafi timetables; elsewhere the 5 minutes before solar noon.
• The last 20 minutes before sunset.

Far north and far south

Near the poles, the sun may not sink far enough for true dawn or Isha, or may not set at all. There we follow the widely used rule of the nearest latitude where the day is normal: times are taken from latitude 64°, then 60°, then 55°, whichever first gives every prayer at least 10 minutes. Such a page says so.

The method used in each country

Twilight angles are a matter of practice, not astronomy, and countries differ. Each country's pages use the method of its Sunni authorities or most of its mosques. Both Asr times are always shown; the column below is the one shown first.

What is still provisional

These are reasoned defaults. We have not yet checked each country's method against its national authority's published timetable, and the 5-minute sehri margin used in India is provisional until it has been compared with the timetables of major Indian institutions. Local timetables also add their own margins. If your masjid's times differ from ours, follow your masjid; and if you find a consistent difference, we would like to know, so that we can correct it (see the corrections log).

Find your city's prayer times

Last updated 2026-10-07.