Qibla direction in Kurgan

How to face the Qibla in Kurgan

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards south and move a further 39.6° towards west: the result is the bearing of 219.6°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “south” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Kurgan.

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 Kurgan to Mecca points to 209.6° (south-west), 10.0° away from the correct 219.6°. 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 55.4491° N, 65.3434° 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 Kurgan to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 4,335 km from Kurgan as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 4,034 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 5 h 36 min, although most pilgrims from Kurgan connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

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

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Kurgan

On 346 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Kurgan 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 15:37 local time.

The sun is never opposite the Qibla of Kurgan during daylight, so the shadow method does not apply here; the left-hand column is the one to use.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both moments are in daylight in Kurgan: at 14:18 and 14:27 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Kurgan compared with other cities

Compared with Moscow, 1,730 km away, the Qibla in Kurgan is turned 43.2° further clockwise (219.6° against 176.4°), and Mecca is 514 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Tyumen (190 km), prays towards 218.6°, a difference of 1.0°.

Across the 158 cities in Russia on this site, the Qibla ranges from 148.7° in Kaliningrad to 305.3° in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, a spread of 156.6°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Russia.

Qibla in cities near Kurgan

• Tyumen218.6° · 190 km
• Kamensk-Uralsky214.2° · 238 km
• Chelyabinsk214.3° · 250 km
• Yekaterinburg212.0° · 332 km
• Miass212.5° · 335 km
• Tobolsk221.4° · 353 km