How to find the qibla direction, and why your compass disagrees
Last updated
The qibla is the great-circle bearing from your location to the Kaaba in Makkah — the shortest path across a sphere, not a straight line on a flat map. This is why the qibla from North America points north-east rather than south-east. A magnetic compass adds a further error, since magnetic north can differ from true north by 20° or more.
What the qibla is, geometrically
The qibla is the direction of the Kaaba in Makkah from wherever you are standing. Since the earth is a sphere, the shortest path between two points on it is a great-circle arc — the line you would get by stretching a string tight across a globe between the two points.
The bearing of that arc where it leaves your location is the qibla. It is a number in degrees clockwise from true north: 0° is north, 90° east, 180° south, 270° west.
One consequence surprises almost everyone the first time: the great-circle bearing is not constant along the route. It changes continuously as you travel. What matters is the initial bearing from where you are, which is what every qibla calculation gives you.
Why it points somewhere you did not expect
From most of North America, the qibla points north-east. People routinely assume this is a bug, because Makkah is obviously south-east of the US on a world map.
The map is the problem. A Mercator projection — the one in nearly every atlas and web map — preserves local angles but severely distorts long-distance paths. The shortest route from Chicago to Makkah passes north over Greenland and Europe. Drawn on a flat map it appears as a sweeping curve, which looks like an error rather than the straight line it actually is.
| From | Approximate bearing | Which is |
|---|---|---|
| London | 119° | east-south-east |
| New York | 58° | north-east |
| Toronto | 52° | north-east |
| Sydney | 278° | west, slightly north |
| Cape Town | 23° | north-north-east |
These are initial great-circle bearings from true north, rounded to the nearest degree. The city pages compute the exact figure for each of their locations and print it with the times.
The compass problem
You have a bearing from true north. Your compass does not point to true north. This is the single largest source of error in practice, and most people are unaware of it.
A magnetic compass — including the magnetometer in your phone — aligns with the earth's magnetic field, whose pole sits some distance from the geographic one and drifts year to year. The gap between the two is magnetic declination, and it varies by location: near zero through parts of Europe, around 13° west in New York, and 20° or more in parts of Alaska and New Zealand.
Which means, in practice:
- If an app gives you a bearing from true north and you follow a raw magnetic compass, you will be off by your local declination.
- Good qibla apps correct for declination automatically. Many do not say whether they have.
- Steel-framed buildings, laptops, speakers and phone cases with magnetic mounts all distort the reading further, sometimes by tens of degrees.
If your phone asks you to wave it in a figure of eight, it is recalibrating the magnetometer because it knows the reading is unreliable. That is worth doing before trusting it.
The method with no compass in it
The most reliable technique available to anyone uses the sun, and it has no magnetic error at all.
At solar noon — which is Dhuhr, near enough — the sun sits due south if you are north of the tropics, and due north if you are south of them. That gives you a true bearing directly, with no declination to correct for. Face the sun at that moment, and you now know where 180° (or 0°) is. Turn from there by the difference between that and your qibla bearing.
A shadow works even better: at solar noon, a vertical object's shadow lies exactly on the north–south line. Mark it once in a room you pray in regularly and you have a permanent true-north reference, good for as long as the furniture stays put.
This is why the printable timetable prints the qibla bearing next to the times. A sheet with Dhuhr on it and a bearing is genuinely sufficient to orient a room, in a hotel or an office where you would rather not stand holding a phone.
On how Dhuhr itself is determined, and why it is very slightly after true solar noon rather than exactly at it, see calculation methods.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does the qibla point north-east from the United States?
- Because the shortest route from North America to Makkah goes over the North Atlantic and Europe, not across the mid-Atlantic. On a globe this is obvious; on a flat map it looks wrong, because flat maps distort direction badly at the distances involved. From New York the great-circle bearing is roughly 58°, which is north-east.
- How accurate does the qibla need to be?
- The widely held position is that facing the general direction is sufficient for anyone not in sight of the Kaaba, and that small deviations do not invalidate the prayer. Getting within a few degrees is more than enough in practice; agonising over a single degree is not what the requirement asks of you.
- Why does my phone compass disagree with the qibla app?
- Usually magnetic declination. A compass points to magnetic north, which can differ from true north by 20° or more depending on where you are. Qibla bearings are given from true north, so unless the app corrects for declination the two will disagree. Nearby metal and electronics distort the reading further.
- How do I find the qibla without a phone?
- Use the sun. At solar noon the sun is due south in the northern hemisphere and due north in the southern, which gives you a true bearing with no magnetic error. From that reference, turn by your qibla bearing. A printed timetable with your Dhuhr time and qibla bearing is enough to do this anywhere.
- Does the qibla change if I move a short distance?
- Negligibly. The bearing changes by a fraction of a degree across a city. It changes meaningfully over hundreds of miles, and it changes fast if you are unusually close to Makkah or near a pole, where small movements swing the bearing sharply.