Qibla direction in San Francisco

How to face the Qibla in San Francisco

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 18.8° towards east: the result is the bearing of 18.8°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at north would leave you about 19° off.

Facing the Qibla is a condition of the prayer. Whoever prays inside the Sacred Mosque faces the Kaaba itself; whoever is far away, as in San Francisco, faces its direction and makes a sincere effort to be accurate. A nearby mosque is a handy reference, because its prayer rows were aligned when it was built. Once you know the direction at home, a discreet mark on the wall saves you from checking again.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from San Francisco to Mecca points to 96.6° (east), a full 77.8° away from the true Qibla of 18.8° (north). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 2,529 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from San Francisco first heads north, and that is the direction to face.

How is the figure of 18.8° obtained? From the coordinates of San Francisco (37.7749° N, 122.4194° W) and of the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E), spherical trigonometry gives the starting bearing of the great circle joining them. Mosque architects and astronomical Qibla tables rely on exactly the same calculation.

Distance from San Francisco to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,176 km from San Francisco as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,844 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 16 h, although most pilgrims from San Francisco connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in San Francisco run 11 hours behind Mecca in winter and 10 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 San Francisco rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in San Francisco

From San Francisco the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 18.8°, 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 13:26.

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

San Francisco compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 3,919 km away, the Qibla in San Francisco is turned 37.7° further anticlockwise (18.8° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 2,543 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Berkeley (17 km), prays towards 19.0°, a difference of 0.1°.

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 San Francisco

• Berkeley19.0° · 17 km
• San Mateo19.0° · 25 km
• Hayward19.2° · 32 km
• Vallejo19.0° · 39 km
• Concord19.2° · 41 km
• Fremont19.3° · 46 km