Prayer Times in Algiers, Algeria Today

Forty-eight minutes west of the meridian it keeps time by

Algiers sits at about 36.75 degrees north and 3.06 degrees east. Algeria keeps UTC+1 in every month of the year, and the meridian that defines UTC+1 runs through 15 degrees east — almost twelve degrees to the east of the capital. Four minutes of solar time separate each degree of longitude, so the sun over Algiers arrives roughly forty-eight minutes behind the clock that measures it.

That offset is the reason Algerian prayer times fall so late on the clock compared with cities at similar latitudes further east in the Mediterranean. It is not a quirk of the calculation and it is not a seasonal effect. The country simply sits well west of its own time zone's reference line, and because there is no daylight saving adjustment anywhere in Algeria, the offset holds identically in January and in July.

Eighteen degrees for Fajr, seventeen for Isha

The Ministry of Religious Affairs sets dawn at 18 degrees of solar depression and nightfall at 17. Those two figures coincide with the Muslim World League's, which is a convenience worth knowing: an app left on that very common international default will already track an Algiers mosque closely at both Fajr and Isha.

Where a table will genuinely differ is when it was built for a neighbouring country. Tunisia uses 18 degrees for both, placing its Isha a degree of depression later. Egypt and Libya use 19.5 and 17.5, which gives an earlier Fajr and a later Isha than Algeria's convention. Fuller background is on the Algeria prayer times hub, which this page assumes rather than repeats.

Where Asr falls, and the school that decides it

Algeria is Maliki, and this table publishes the Asr threshold that follows from that. Stand something upright and note the shadow it casts when the sun is at its highest point in the day. Asr opens once that shadow has lengthened by a further amount equal to the object's own height.

Hanafi scholarship waits for a second such length and arrives roughly forty minutes to an hour later in the afternoon. Both positions are old and seriously argued, and a published table has no choice but to commit to one. This one follows what Algerian mosques announce. If your phone shows an Asr an hour behind the call you hear in the street, the Asr setting is almost certainly the reason.

Djamaa el Djazair, and one calculation for the whole capital

Djamaa el Djazair, the Great Mosque of Algiers, stands on the bay at Mohammadia and carries the tallest minaret in the world. The Ketchaoua Mosque in the Casbah is far older and sits at the other end of the city's history. Between them are several hundred neighbourhood mosques across the wilaya.

All of them work from the same astronomical figures, because the coordinates that generate this table cover the whole conurbation to well within a minute. What differs between congregations is the gap kept between the adhan and the iqama, which each mosque sets for itself and which varies by several minutes across the city. A difference of that kind between this page and the moment a congregation actually stands is normal practice, not a disagreement about the sun.

What the sunrise entry closes

Sunrise appears alongside the five prayers because it marks the end of the window in which Fajr may still be prayed. Nothing is due at that moment and it is not itself a prayer.

Each Ramadan it gets described as the point at which the fast begins, which is not correct. The fast begins at Fajr, an appreciable distance earlier under an 18-degree dawn angle.

The year at nearly thirty-seven degrees north

Daylight in Algiers runs from around nine and a half hours at the winter solstice to close to fourteen and a half at the summer one. That is a genuine annual swing — enough that a routine settled in December feels misjudged by June — but it is moderate, and nothing like the compression northern European cities contend with.

Because Isha is defined by an angle rather than by a fixed number of minutes after sunset, the evening gap between Maghrib and Isha also changes across the year rather than holding its shape. Anything habitually scheduled into that gap is worth rechecking when the seasons turn. What will not change is the clock itself, since Algeria makes no seasonal adjustment.

Sahur and iftar in the capital

The fasting day runs from Fajr to Maghrib, both of which are in the table above. Both boundaries drift steadily across the thirty days, so the monthly view is the one to open at the start of the month rather than reading a single day and assuming it stands for the rest.

Many mosques announce an imsak a few minutes ahead of the calculated Fajr as a precautionary margin. This page publishes the astronomical figure and leaves that margin where it belongs, between you and your mosque.

Direction of prayer, Arabic, and the rest of the country

Use the Qibla direction tool to resolve the direction from your own position rather than carrying one over from another building or another city. For a permanent installation, have the bearing surveyed properly; a phone compass near reinforced concrete or in the steel-framed buildings along the bay is not dependable enough to fix an orientation. Ramadan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar, and the Arabic Algiers schedule carries the same table. For the national spread, compare Annaba prayer times in the far east and Tlemcen prayer times in the far west.