Qibla direction in Tomsk

How to face the Qibla in Tomsk

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards west and move a further 27.7° towards south: the result is the bearing of 242.3°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at west would leave you about 28° 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

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from Tomsk to Mecca points to 223.9° (south-west), a full 18.4° away from the true Qibla of 242.3° (south-west). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 60 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Tomsk first heads south-west, and that is the direction to face.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 56.5005° N, 84.9822° 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 Tomsk to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 5,357 km from Tomsk as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 5,083 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 6 h 48 min, although most pilgrims from Tomsk connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Tomsk run 4 hours ahead of Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Tomsk rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Tomsk

On 247 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Tomsk while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in March (31 days); for example, on 1 March 2027 it happens at 17:41 local time.

On 86 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 July (31 days), for instance on 15 May 2027 at 05:52.

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

Tomsk compared with other cities

Compared with Moscow, 2,878 km away, the Qibla in Tomsk is turned 66.0° further clockwise (242.3° against 176.4°), and Mecca is 1,535 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Kemerovo (145 km), prays towards 244.4°, a difference of 2.1°.

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 Tomsk

• Kemerovo244.4° · 145 km
• Novosibirsk241.4° · 208 km
• Leninsk-Kuznetsky245.1° · 218 km
• Prokopyevsk246.3° · 308 km
• Novokuznetsk246.8° · 334 km
• Achinsk248.2° · 341 km