Prayer Times in Aswan, Egypt Today

The place where the midday shadow almost disappears

Aswan lies at roughly 24.09 degrees north and 32.90 degrees east, which puts it around seventy kilometres north of the Tropic of Cancer — closer to that line than any other city on Egypt's list. Near the June solstice the sun climbs to within a degree or so of the vertical at midday, and an upright pole here casts almost no shadow at all.

This is not a curiosity invented for a web page. Ancient Syene stood on this site, and the observation that the solstice sun stood nearly overhead here is precisely what Eratosthenes used to estimate the size of the earth. It remains true, it is checkable with a stick, and it has a direct bearing on how the afternoon prayer is reckoned.

Why that matters to Asr

Asr is defined by shadow growth, not by the clock. The rule is that the prayer enters once an upright object's shadow has extended by the object's own height beyond whatever shadow it cast at solar noon.

In most of the world that midday shadow is a real length that has to be added in. In Aswan around midsummer it is close to nothing, so the threshold reduces almost exactly to the sun standing at forty-five degrees of altitude. The consequence is that the interval between Dhuhr and Asr here is at its narrowest in the country during those weeks — the clock has less work to do because the shadow starts from nearly zero. The Hanafi threshold, which waits for a doubled shadow, falls correspondingly later; this page prints the Shafi'i and Maliki figure, which is what mosques in Upper Egypt use.

Six or seven minutes ahead of the capital

Aswan is about one and two-thirds degrees of longitude east of Cairo. At four minutes to the degree, that puts every prayer here roughly six to seven minutes earlier on the clock than the capital's, on every date of the year and without seasonal variation. Egypt keeps a single national clock, so the whole of that difference is the sun's, not the timekeeper's.

Compared against Alexandria at the far north-west of the country, the offset grows to something near twelve minutes. A schedule brought south from the Delta will be late at both ends of a fasting day.

The narrowest annual range in the country

Latitude decides how much a table moves between summer and winter, and at just over twenty-four degrees north Aswan has the smallest range in Egypt. Day length here runs from roughly thirteen and a half hours at midsummer to about ten and a half at midwinter — close to three hours of travel across the year, against nearly four in the Delta.

That translates into a steadier life. Summer nights are not as short here as they are in Alexandria, and winter afternoons are not as compressed. Upper Egypt genuinely has an easier summer fast than the north, by a margin of the better part of an hour on the longest days.

Shorter twilight this far south

There is a second latitude effect that people notice without being able to name. Nearer the equator the sun drops towards the horizon at a steeper angle, so it passes through the twilight band faster. The interval between Fajr and sunrise, and between Maghrib and Isha, is therefore a few minutes shorter in Aswan than at the same season in the Delta.

During Ramadan that is worth knowing: the window between breaking the fast and standing for taraweeh is tighter here than northern relatives will describe over the phone.

The national convention, applied at the southern end

Egypt's official parameters come from the General Authority of Survey: 19.5 degrees of solar depression for Fajr, 17.5 for Isha. Those are applied unchanged to Aswan's coordinates. The Egypt prayer times hub explains the convention and how far beyond Egypt it travelled. The country's seasonal clock change moves this table by an hour twice a year like every other Egyptian page.

Nubian Aswan and the fasting month

Fajr closes the pre-dawn meal and Maghrib opens iftar; sunrise appears in the table but bounds neither, marking instead the point after which Fajr can no longer be prayed. With a 19.5-degree dawn angle, the gap between the two is substantial and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Aswan's summer heat is the practical constraint most households plan around rather than the timetable itself, and the monthly view is more useful than a single day's figures because the times shift steadily through the month. As elsewhere in Egypt, printed calendars often give an imsak a few minutes before Fajr as a margin. This page gives the calculated dawn.

The Friday gathering in Upper Egypt

Jumu'ah replaces Dhuhr for those who attend, timed from the Dhuhr entry here. In the villages along the river and on the west bank, congregations often draw from a wider catchment than a city mosque would, so the walk is usually the binding constraint rather than the call. Sermon length and the delay before the iqama are set locally.

Orientation and other tables

Fix the direction of prayer with the Qibla direction tool, which computes it from your own position; a bearing carried down from Cairo is not the same bearing this far south. The Hijri calendar lists Ramadan and Eid, and there is an Arabic Aswan schedule. Downriver, Luxor prayer times run about a minute behind this page; Cairo prayer times are six or seven minutes behind it.