Prayer Times in Damietta, Egypt Today

The northernmost point on Egypt's list

Damietta stands where the eastern branch of the Nile reaches the Mediterranean, at about 31.42 degrees north and 31.81 degrees east. No other Egyptian city on this site sits further north — Port Said and Alexandria are close behind, but Damietta has the highest latitude of the eighteen.

That matters more than it sounds. Latitude is what decides how far a prayer table travels between summer and winter, and being at the top of the national range means this page has the widest annual movement in Egypt. Everything else about the method is identical to Cairo's; the shape of the year is not.

Over an hour more annual swing than Aswan

Day length here runs from a little over fourteen hours at midsummer down to just under ten at midwinter. That is roughly four hours of range across the year.

Aswan, at the far southern end of the country, swings by about three hours. The difference between the two — more than an hour of extra annual movement — is the largest internal contrast in the Egyptian table and it explains why a national calendar cannot serve both places. Someone who moves from Upper Egypt to the Delta coast will notice that the summer evening simply does not end and the winter afternoon disappears far more quickly than they are used to.

Long twilight at the top of the Delta

There is a second latitude effect that people feel without naming. The further north you go, the shallower the angle at which the sun descends towards the horizon, and the longer it spends inside the twilight band.

So the interval between Fajr and sunrise, and between Maghrib and Isha, is at its longest in Egypt here. It is a matter of a few minutes rather than a transformation, but it runs the same way all year and it compounds with the wider day-length range. Under Egypt's 19.5-degree dawn angle the pre-sunrise stretch is already generous; at this latitude it is the most generous in the country.

A shade over two minutes ahead of Cairo

Longitude does much less work here than latitude. Damietta lies a little more than half a degree east of the capital, which comes to something over two minutes. All five prayers enter that much earlier than Cairo's on every day of the year, without seasonal variation.

Two minutes is at the edge of what is worth acting on. If you are moving between Damietta and Cairo the difference in the fixed offset is negligible; what is not negligible is the seasonal difference described above, which at the solstices runs to considerably more.

The convention behind the arithmetic

Fajr is computed at 19.5 degrees of solar depression and Isha at 17.5, the General Authority of Survey parameters used nationally and applied here to Damietta's coordinates. Background is on the Egypt prayer times hub. Egypt's reinstated seasonal clock change moves this table by an hour twice a year, which is a matter of timekeeping rather than of the sun.

The shadow threshold used for the afternoon

Asr appears at the Shafi'i and Maliki reckoning: the point at which an upright object's shadow has extended by the object's own height beyond its midday length. The Hanafi threshold is a doubled shadow and falls something like forty minutes to an hour later depending on the date.

Both schools have long histories in Egypt, and a table has to commit to one. If a nearby mosque calls Asr distinctly later than this page lists, it is following the other reading, and the remaining four prayers will match exactly.

The longest summer fast in Egypt

It follows from everything above that the Ramadan fasting day is longer here, when Ramadan falls in summer, than anywhere else on Egypt's list — by the better part of an hour compared with Aswan. Fajr closes the pre-dawn meal and Maghrib opens iftar, and both boundaries drift steadily across the month, so the monthly view is more useful than checking one day at a time.

Sunrise is in the table and bounds neither end of the fast. It marks the close of the window in which Fajr can still be prayed, and at this latitude under this dawn angle that window is unusually long. Local calendars often print an imsak a few minutes before Fajr as a deliberate cushion; this page publishes the calculated dawn itself.

Friday in a workshop city

Damietta's furniture trade runs out of a very large number of small workshops rather than a few big employers, and the working week is organised accordingly. Jumu'ah replaces Dhuhr for those attending and takes its timing from the Dhuhr entry above; in workshop districts the congregation assembles from a tight radius, so mosques often keep a short interval between the call and the standing. Those praying at home use the ordinary Dhuhr time.

Facing Makkah, and where to read next

Rather than reuse a direction remembered from elsewhere, compute the bearing for your own position with the Qibla direction tool. Ramadan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar, and an Arabic Damietta schedule carries the same table. Upriver, Mansoura prayer times cover the same branch of the Nile; for the sharpest contrast with this page in both latitude and season, see Aswan prayer times.