Qibla direction in Culiacán

How to face the Qibla in Culiacán

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 37.4° towards east: the result is the bearing of 37.4°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “north” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Culiacán.

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

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from Culiacán to Mecca points to 91.4° (east), a full 54.1° away from the true Qibla of 37.4° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,285 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Culiacán first heads north-east, and that is the direction to face.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 24.8021° N, 107.3942° 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 Culiacán to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,773 km from Culiacán as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 13,486 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 16 h 42 min, although most pilgrims from Culiacán connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Culiacán run 10 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Culiacán rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Culiacán

From Culiacán the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 37.4°, so you cannot simply face the sun. The opposite method works instead, as the right-hand column of the table shows.

On 365 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 January (31 days), for instance on 1 January 2027 at 14:29.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Culiacán (02:18 and 02:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 14:29 and 28 November 2027 at 14:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Culiacán points straight to Mecca.

Culiacán compared with other cities

Compared with Mexico City, 1,040 km away, the Qibla in Culiacán is turned 9.2° further anticlockwise (37.4° against 46.6°), and Mecca is 127 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Los Mochis (195 km), prays towards 35.5°, a difference of 1.9°.

Across the 99 cities in Mexico on this site, the Qibla ranges from 25.5° in Rosarito to 54.2° in Chetumal, a spread of 28.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Mexico.

Qibla in cities near Culiacán

• Los Mochis35.5° · 195 km
• Mazatlán38.9° · 202 km
• Durango40.1° · 290 km
• Parral38.1° · 293 km
• La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico34.9° · 304 km
• San José del Cabo36.0° · 305 km