Prayer Times in Alexandria, Egypt Today

The last major Egyptian city the sun reaches

Alexandria lies near 31.20 degrees north and 29.92 degrees east. That longitude is the important half. It places the city about one and a third degrees west of Cairo, and since the sun covers a degree of longitude every four minutes, every prayer here enters roughly five minutes later on the clock than it does in the capital — Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha alike, on every day of the year.

Alexandria is also the westernmost city on Egypt's list here, which makes it the last of them to receive each event. Measured against Sharm El Sheikh at the far eastern end, the gap widens to something close to eighteen minutes. Both cities keep the same clock. The difference is entirely in where the sun is.

A northern latitude and the widest seasonal range in the country

At 31.2 degrees north, Alexandria sits near the top of Egypt's latitude range, and that produces the largest annual movement in the national table. The longest days here run to around fourteen hours between sunrise and sunset; the shortest fall just under ten. That is a swing of roughly four hours across the year.

Compare that with Aswan, where the equivalent swing is closer to three hours, and the pattern is clear: the further north you go in Egypt, the more the timetable moves between summer and winter. A worshipper who has moved north from Upper Egypt will notice the summer evening in particular, because Isha holds off considerably longer here in June than it does in the south.

Twilight over water

The city faces the open Mediterranean along its whole northern edge, and the sea gives an unusually clean horizon in that direction. It is worth being precise about what that does and does not change. Prayer time calculation everywhere assumes a flat, unobstructed horizon at sea level, so a sea view happens to match the model's assumption more closely than a city hemmed in by high ground would. It does not shift the figures. It simply means that on a clear evening the calculated Maghrib and the sun visibly touching the water line up about as well as they ever do anywhere.

Height is a different matter. From an upper floor of a Corniche building you can see the sun for a minute or two after someone at street level has lost it. The table is computed for ground level, and the ground-level figure is the one the mosques are working to.

Which threshold the afternoon prayer uses

This page places Asr at the point where an object's shadow has extended by its own height beyond the shadow it cast at solar noon — the Shafi'i and Maliki position, and the one used by the great majority of Egyptian mosques. The Hanafi school waits for a second such extension, which puts its Asr somewhere between forty minutes and an hour later depending on the date.

If you were raised on the Hanafi reckoning and the listed Asr looks early, that is the reason. Nothing else in the table is affected by the difference.

The angles behind the figures, briefly

Egypt works to the General Authority of Survey's parameters, 19.5 degrees for Fajr and 17.5 for Isha, and Alexandria's table is those numbers applied to the coordinates above. The Egypt prayer times hub sets out where the convention came from and how widely it is used. Note also that Egypt observes summer time again, so the whole schedule steps by an hour twice a year without the sun doing anything remarkable.

Ramadan in Alexandria

The pre-dawn meal ends at Fajr and the fast breaks at Maghrib; both are listed for every day of the month in the monthly view, which is more useful during Ramadan than checking one day at a time, because the times drift steadily through the month rather than holding still.

Sunrise is in the table but marks neither boundary. Its job is to close the period in which Fajr can still be prayed, and with a 19.5-degree dawn angle that period is long — long enough that mistaking sunrise for the end of sahur would be a serious error rather than a marginal one. As in most Egyptian cities, some local calendars advertise an imsak slightly before Fajr as a safety margin. This page gives the calculated Fajr.

Getting the direction right in a city built on a diagonal

Alexandria's older street grid runs along the curve of the coast rather than on any cardinal alignment, which makes it a poor city in which to estimate the direction of prayer by eye from the shape of a room or the line of a street. Use the Qibla direction tool, which computes the bearing from your actual position. If you are fixing an orientation permanently — a prayer room, a new build — have it surveyed rather than trusting a phone compass, which is easily deflected by reinforced concrete and by the steel in modern construction.

Friday, and where else to look

Jumu'ah replaces Dhuhr for those who attend and is timed from the Dhuhr entry here. How long after the call a given mosque actually begins is a local decision and varies across the city's districts. Those praying at home keep the ordinary Dhuhr time.

Ramadan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar, and there is an Arabic Alexandria schedule with the same table. For the nearest large comparison, five minutes to the east, see Cairo prayer times; for the opposite extreme in both latitude and longitude, Aswan prayer times.