Qibla direction in Samara

How to face the Qibla in Samara

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards south and move a further 17.9° towards west: the result is the bearing of 197.9°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at south would leave you about 18° 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 Samara to Mecca points to 194.1° (south), 3.9° away from the correct 197.9°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 2 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 53.2077° N, 50.1355° 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 Samara to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 3,642 km from Samara as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 3,315 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 4 h 47 min, although most pilgrims from Samara connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Samara run 1 hour ahead of Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Samara rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Samara

On 365 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Samara 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 13:59 local time.

The sun is never opposite the Qibla of Samara 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 Samara: at 13:18 and 13:27 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Samara compared with other cities

Compared with Moscow, 855 km away, the Qibla in Samara is turned 21.6° further clockwise (197.9° against 176.4°), and Mecca is 180 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Novokuybyshevsk (18 km), prays towards 197.7°, a difference of 0.3°.

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 Samara

• Novokuybyshevsk197.7° · 18 km
• Tolyatti196.5° · 63 km
• Syzran195.1° · 111 km
• Dimitrovgrad196.6° · 117 km
• Ulyanovsk194.5° · 170 km
• Balakovo194.4° · 205 km