Qibla direction in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States

How to face the Qibla in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards east and move a further 29.8° towards north: the result is the bearing of 60.2°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at east would leave you about 30° 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 Manchester, New Hampshire, United States to Mecca points to 103.0° (east), a full 42.9° away from the true Qibla of 60.2° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 637 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Manchester, New Hampshire, 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 42.9956° N, 71.4548° 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 Manchester, New Hampshire, United States to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 9,995 km from Manchester, New Hampshire, United States as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 9,733 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 12 h 16 min, although most pilgrims from Manchester, New Hampshire, United States connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States run 8 hours behind Mecca in winter and 7 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 Manchester, New Hampshire, United States rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States

From Manchester, New Hampshire, United States the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 60.2°, so you cannot simply face the sun. The opposite method works instead, as the right-hand column of the table shows.

On 294 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 March (31 days), for instance on 1 February 2027 at 16:17.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States (05:18 and 05:27 local time), so they cannot be used here.

Manchester, New Hampshire, United States compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 654 km away, the Qibla in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States is turned 3.6° further clockwise (60.2° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 638 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Lowell (42 km), prays towards 60.3°, 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 Manchester, New Hampshire, United States

• Lowell60.3° · 42 km
• Boston60.4° · 78 km
• Worcester, Massachusetts, United States59.9° · 86 km
• Providence60.2° · 130 km
• Springfield, Massachusetts, United States59.4° · 136 km
• New Bedford60.5° · 157 km