how prayer times are worked out, and why two timetables differ
prayer times follow the sun. they are worked out from where you are and the date, and from a few choices. those choices are why two apps, or an app and a masjid, can be some minutes apart while each follows a known method.
what hardly changes
sunrise, Ẓuhr (just after the sun is at its highest) and Maghrib (sunset) depend only on the place and the date. timetables rarely differ on these by more than a minute or two, from rounding or a minute of caution.
Fajr and ʿIshāʾ: the method
Fajr and ʿIshāʾ are tied to twilight, measured by how far the sun is below the horizon. authorities have settled on different angles, and a few set ʿIshāʾ a fixed time after Maghrib. a bigger angle gives an earlier Fajr and a later ʿIshāʾ. these are the methods arihna uses, and where it uses each unless you choose another:
| method | Fajr | ʿIshāʾ | where arihna uses it |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Moonsighting Committee’s method | 18° | 18° | UK, US, Canada |
| the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi | 18° | 18° | India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan |
| the Muslim World League’s method | 18° | 17° | 65 countries, among them Nigeria, Germany, France, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq |
| the Egyptian General Authority of Survey | 19.5° | 17.5° | Egypt |
| the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura method | 20° | 18° | Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore |
| the Umm al-Qurā University, Makkah method | 18.5° | 90 minutes after Maghrib, and 120 in Ramaḍān | Saudi Arabia |
| Dubai’s method | 18.2° | 18.2° | UAE |
| Qatar’s method | 18° | 90 minutes after Maghrib | Qatar |
| Kuwait’s method | 18° | 17.5° | Kuwait |
| an approximation of the Diyanet’s method, Turkey | 18° | 17° | Türkiye |
| the Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran | 17.7° | 14° | Iran |
the angles are the ones the open adhan library gives each method. some methods also move a time by a few minutes, which is one more reason two timetables can differ.
ʿAṣr: two ways
ʿAṣr is worked out from the length of a shadow. the sum takes a shadow as long as the thing that casts it for the Shāfiʿī, Mālikī and Ḥanbalī way, and twice as long for the Ḥanafī way, which comes later. arihna’s city pages show both, and in the app you choose.
the far north and south
in summer, far from the equator, the sun never gets far enough below the horizon for those angles, so a rule is needed to place Fajr and ʿIshāʾ, and the rules give different times. arihna keeps them within a share of the night set by their angles. where the sun does not rise or set at all, it uses the times at latitude 45° on your own meridian.
your masjid
a masjid’s timetable may follow another method or add minutes of caution, and its iqāmah, when the prayer is prayed together, comes after the time the prayer begins. your masjid’s own times come first where they differ.
in arihna
the app works the times out on your phone for where you are, every day, with your country’s method, and you can change the method and the way of ʿAṣr. prayer times by city