Qibla direction in Tucson

How to face the Qibla in Tucson

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 31.5° towards east: the result is the bearing of 31.5°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “north” would be off by more than 30°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Tucson.

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 Tucson to Mecca points to 94.6° (east), a full 63.1° away from the true Qibla of 31.5° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,686 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Tucson 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 32.2217° N, 110.9265° 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 Tucson to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,288 km from Tucson as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,978 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 16 h 08 min, although most pilgrims from Tucson connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Tucson run 10 hours behind Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Tucson rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Tucson

From Tucson the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 31.5°, 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 14:28.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Tucson (02:18 and 02:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 14:29 and 28 November 2027 at 14:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Tucson points straight to Mecca.

Tucson compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 3,135 km away, the Qibla in Tucson is turned 25.1° further anticlockwise (31.5° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 2,654 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Mesa (158 km), prays towards 30.3°, a difference of 1.2°.

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 Tucson

• Mesa30.3° · 158 km
• Phoenix30.1° · 173 km
• Peoria, Arizona, United States29.9° · 194 km
• Las Cruces35.3° · 390 km
• El Paso35.7° · 422 km
• Albuquerque34.6° · 508 km