Qibla direction in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

How to face the Qibla in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 39.3° towards north: the result is the bearing of 50.7°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “east” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Birmingham, Alabama, United States.

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 Birmingham, Alabama, United States to Mecca points to 96.2° (east), a full 45.5° away from the true Qibla of 50.7° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 837 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Birmingham, Alabama, United States 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 33.5207° N, 86.8025° 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 Birmingham, Alabama, United States to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 11,692 km from Birmingham, Alabama, United States as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 11,432 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 14 h 15 min, although most pilgrims from Birmingham, Alabama, United States connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Birmingham, Alabama, United States run 9 hours behind Mecca in winter and 8 hours behind Mecca in summer, because of daylight saving time. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Birmingham, Alabama, United States rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

From Birmingham, Alabama, United States the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 50.7°, 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 15:31.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Birmingham, Alabama, United States (04:18 and 04:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 15:29 and 28 November 2027 at 15:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Birmingham, Alabama, United States points straight to Mecca.

Birmingham, Alabama, United States compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 1,060 km away, the Qibla in Birmingham, Alabama, United States is turned 5.8° further anticlockwise (50.7° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 1,059 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Tuscaloosa (79 km), prays towards 50.2°, a difference of 0.5°.

Across the 244 cities in the United States on this site, the Qibla ranges from 17.2° in Hillsboro to 350.9° in Anchorage, a spread of 333.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for United States.

Qibla in cities near Birmingham, Alabama, United States

• Tuscaloosa50.2° · 79 km
• Huntsville50.6° · 136 km
• Montgomery51.3° · 137 km
• South Fulton52.2° · 197 km
• Columbus, Georgia, United States52.2° · 206 km
• Chattanooga51.4° · 218 km