Qibla direction in Araucária

How to face the Qibla in Araucária

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 19.8° towards north: the result is the bearing of 70.2°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at east would leave you about 20° off.

Scholars agree that someone who can see the Kaaba must face it exactly, while someone far away faces its direction (jihat al-Ka‘bah) as precisely as reasonably possible. If a mosque is nearby, its mihrab and prayer lines are the easiest reference, since they were set when the building was laid out. At home, mark the direction once with tape or a small arrow so the whole family prays the same way.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

A straight line drawn on a flat (Mercator) map from Araucária to Mecca points to 61.5° (north-east), 8.7° away from the correct 70.2°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 15 km longer than the true shortest route. The Qibla follows the great circle, the shortest path on the curved Earth, which is why the bearing differs.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 25.5931° S, 49.4103° W to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). It is the method used by mosque architects and by every serious Qibla calculator, and it gives one exact answer for each point on Earth.

Distance from Araucária to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 10,945 km from Araucária as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 11,063 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 13 h 23 min, although most pilgrims from Araucária connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Araucária run 6 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Araucária rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Araucária

On 270 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Araucária while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in January (31 days); for example, on 1 January 2027 it happens at 11:52 local time.

On 67 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in December (31 days), for instance on 1 January 2027 at 18:09.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Araucária (06:18 and 06:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 18:29 and 28 November 2027 at 18:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Araucária points straight to Mecca.

Araucária compared with other cities

Compared with Brasília, 1,102 km away, the Qibla in Araucária is turned 1.5° further clockwise (70.2° against 68.8°), and Mecca is 528 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Campo Largo (19 km), prays towards 70.2°, the same bearing to the tenth of a degree.

Across the 257 cities in Brazil on this site, the Qibla ranges from 66.1° in Maceió to 74.2° in Uruguaiana, a spread of 8.1°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Brazil.

Qibla in cities near Araucária

• Campo Largo70.2° · 19 km
• Curitiba70.1° · 23 km
• Piraquara70.1° · 38 km
• Colombo, Paraná, Brazil70.1° · 38 km
• Paranaguá69.9° · 89 km
• Ponta Grossa70.4° · 94 km