Qibla direction in Jackson

How to face the Qibla in Jackson

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 41.4° towards north: the result is the bearing of 48.6°. Because the angle sits far from the cardinal points, a rough guess such as “east” would be off by more than 40°, which is why a measured bearing matters in Jackson.

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 Jackson to Mecca points to 95.4° (east), a full 46.8° away from the true Qibla of 48.6° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 904 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Jackson 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 32.2988° N, 90.1848° 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 Jackson to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 12,021 km from Jackson as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 11,757 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 14 h 39 min, although most pilgrims from Jackson connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Jackson 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 Jackson rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Jackson

From Jackson the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 48.6°, 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 Jackson (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 Jackson points straight to Mecca.

Jackson compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 1,395 km away, the Qibla in Jackson is turned 8.0° further anticlockwise (48.6° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 1,387 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Baton Rouge (227 km), prays towards 48.4°, a difference of 0.2°.

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 Jackson

• Baton Rouge48.4° · 227 km
• New Orleans49.3° · 261 km
• Tuscaloosa50.2° · 265 km
• Mobile50.5° · 270 km
• Lafayette47.8° · 289 km
• Memphis48.0° · 317 km