Namaz Times in Ahmedabad, India Today

Forty minutes for the clock to catch up with the sun

Ahmedabad stands at about 23.02 degrees north and 72.57 degrees east, which places it near the western limit of the country's populated belt. Indian Standard Time is set from the meridian at 82.5 degrees east, running through eastern Uttar Pradesh, and this city lies almost ten degrees west of that line. At four minutes of solar time per degree, the sun does not reach its highest point over Ahmedabad until roughly forty minutes after the clock has said noon.

That offset applies to all five prayers equally and never changes. Dhuhr is late here against the clock, Asr is late, Maghrib is late — not because anything unusual happens in the sky over Gujarat, but because the clock belongs to a meridian more than a thousand kilometres away. Together with the Mumbai coast, this is where India's latest clock times are found.

The far end of the country from Bengal

The clearest way to see the size of the effect is to put Ahmedabad next to Kolkata, at 88.36 degrees east. The two are separated by close to sixteen degrees of longitude, which works out at about sixty-three minutes. On any given evening, Kolkata has broken its roza, prayed Maghrib and is heading toward Isha while Ahmedabad is still an hour short of sunset — on the same date, in the same country, on the same clock reading.

Nearer comparisons follow the same arithmetic. Delhi is around eighteen minutes ahead of this page, Hyderabad about twenty-four, Lucknow roughly thirty-four. None of these gaps varies by season or by calculation method. They are fixed by geography and nothing else, which is why a printed timetable brought from another state is wrong here by a predictable and quite large amount.

Almost Mumbai's longitude, four degrees further north

Ahmedabad and Mumbai sit within a third of a degree of the same meridian. Their solar noons therefore fall within a minute or so of each other, and Dhuhr in the two cities is called at practically the same clock time. Anything that separates the two tables comes from latitude, not longitude.

Ahmedabad is close to four degrees further north, and that shows up in Fajr and Maghrib rather than at midday. Summer days here are slightly longer than on the Mumbai coast and winter days slightly shorter, so the two schedules open and close a few minutes apart in opposite directions depending on the month, while meeting in the middle of the day all year round.

The two Asr thresholds, and the one printed here

Asr is the single prayer where the difference between listings is a matter of law rather than astronomy. Both schools of reckoning begin from the same measurement — the shadow an upright object throws at solar noon, which at this latitude is never zero.

• Under the Hanafi position, Asr enters when the shadow has lengthened by twice the object's own height beyond that noon shadow.
• Under the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position, one further object-length is enough.

The Hanafi time is consequently later, typically by forty minutes to an hour, and the difference stretches in winter when the sun stays low. The Asr on this page uses the Hanafi threshold, in line with the school followed by most Muslims in Gujarat and across India generally. If the masjid you pray in follows the Shafi'i position, its Asr will come noticeably earlier than the figure here, and you should take it from them. The other four prayers are unaffected by the disagreement.

Eighteen degrees at both ends of the night

Fajr and Isha cannot be settled by shadow length, because at dawn and after dusk there is no sun to cast one. They are defined instead by how far the sun has dropped below the horizon, and different authorities draw that line at different depths. This page applies the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi convention — eighteen degrees for Fajr and eighteen for Isha — which is what is generally used across India. The India prayer times hub explains the choice.

If an app shows a Fajr several minutes away from the local announcement, the method setting is the first thing to check, since a Gulf or Muslim World League default uses shallower angles. What is left after that is normally iqama practice: the gap a mosque leaves between the adhan and the start of the congregation, which is a local decision and varies from one street to the next.

Roza on the western edge

Fajr ends sehri and Maghrib begins iftar. Sunrise is printed in the table but bounds neither of them; it marks the last moment at which Fajr can still be prayed. Because the dawn angle used here is a deep one, the interval between Fajr and sunrise is considerable, and treating the two as the same thing during Ramzan is an error of real size.

What is distinctive about fasting in Ahmedabad is simply that everything sits late on the clock. The fast is no longer in real terms than it is in Kolkata — the sun does the same work — but sehri and iftar both fall at a later reading of the same national clock than they do anywhere to the east. Since Isha is fixed by a twilight angle rather than by a set number of minutes after sunset, the interval between iftar and taraweeh also shifts through the month; check the monthly Ahmedabad table once at the start rather than assuming the first day holds.

Friday in the walled city

Jumu'ah replaces Dhuhr for those attending, and the adhan is anchored to the Dhuhr time listed above. The historic congregations inside the old walled city, the Jama Masjid and the Sidi Saiyyed mosque among them, draw crowds that arrive long before the khutbah starts, and the imam sets both its beginning and its length. Anyone praying at home prays Dhuhr at the ordinary listed time.

Setting the direction, and nearby pages

Resolve the direction of prayer with the Qibla direction tool using your own coordinates rather than a figure quoted for somewhere else. From anywhere in India it is broadly westward, but the exact bearing changes with location and phone compasses are readily pulled off line indoors by steel and reinforced concrete. Ramzan and Eid dates are listed on the Hijri calendar. The closest table to this one is Mumbai prayer times; for the opposite end of the country see Kolkata prayer times.