Qibla direction

What the qibla direction is

The qibla is the direction of the Ka'bah in Makkah, the direction Muslims face in prayer. On a globe the shortest path between two points is a great circle, so the qibla from any place is the initial bearing of the great circle running from that place to the Ka'bah — which is why it is a different bearing from every city, and why a single fixed direction drawn on a map would be wrong almost everywhere.

How the bearing is computed

The bearing is the initial great-circle heading from your coordinates to the Ka'bah, measured clockwise from TRUE north, and the distance is the great-circle distance over a spherical earth. Both are computed in your browser with the same formula the Azkar app uses, so the two answer identically for the same coordinates.

Ka'bah coordinates

21.4225, 39.8262

Earth radius used

6371.0088 km

Bearing reference

True north

A device compass points at MAGNETIC north, which differs from true north by up to about 20 degrees depending on where you are. Where the browser reports a compass heading it is used as given; when precision matters, check the reading against a known landmark or a paper map.