Qibla direction in Ilesa

How to face the Qibla in Ilesa

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 26.0° towards north: the result is the bearing of 64.0°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at east would leave you about 26° 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 Ilesa to Mecca points to 67.8° (east), 3.8° away from the correct 64.0°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 4 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 7.6279° N, 4.7416° E 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 Ilesa to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 4,062 km from Ilesa as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 4,151 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 5 h 17 min, although most pilgrims from Ilesa connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Ilesa run 2 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Ilesa rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Ilesa

On 146 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Ilesa while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in May (31 days); for example, on 15 April 2027 it happens at 12:23 local time.

On 218 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 17:31.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both moments are in daylight in Ilesa: at 10:18 and 10:27 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Ilesa compared with other cities

Compared with Abuja, 342 km away, the Qibla in Ilesa is turned 0.6° further anticlockwise (64.0° against 64.6°), and Mecca is 342 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Efon-Alaaye (20 km), prays towards 64.0°, the same bearing to the tenth of a degree.

Across the 90 cities in Nigeria on this site, the Qibla ranges from 58.6° in Esuk Oron to 70.9° in Sokoto, a spread of 12.3°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Nigeria.

Qibla in cities near Ilesa

• Efon-Alaaye64.0° · 20 km
• Ile-Ife63.9° · 26 km
• Osogbo64.3° · 26 km
• Ikirun64.4° · 33 km
• Ijero-Ekiti64.1° · 41 km
• Gbongan64.0° · 46 km