Qibla direction in El Paso

How to face the Qibla in El Paso

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 35.7° towards east: the result is the bearing of 35.7°. 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 El Paso.

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 El Paso to Mecca points to 94.5° (east), a full 58.8° away from the true Qibla of 35.7° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 1,466 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from El Paso 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 31.7587° N, 106.4869° 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 El Paso to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,099 km from El Paso as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 12,800 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 15 h 55 min, although most pilgrims from El Paso connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in El Paso run 10 hours behind Mecca in winter and 9 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 El Paso rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in El Paso

From El Paso the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 35.7°, 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 14:29.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in El Paso (03:18 and 03:27 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 El Paso points straight to Mecca.

El Paso compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 2,773 km away, the Qibla in El Paso is turned 20.9° further anticlockwise (35.7° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 2,465 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Las Cruces (67 km), prays towards 35.3°, a difference of 0.4°.

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 El Paso

• Las Cruces35.3° · 67 km
• Albuquerque34.6° · 370 km
• Odessa39.3° · 389 km
• Midland39.5° · 417 km
• Tucson31.5° · 422 km
• Lubbock39.2° · 478 km