Namaz Times in Jaipur, India Today

The sundial in this city does not read Indian Standard Time

The Samrat Yantra at the Jantar Mantar, built here in the 1730s and still the largest stone sundial in the world, is accurate to within a couple of seconds. It also disagrees with every clock in Jaipur, and the reason is the whole subject of this page.

The sundial reports what the sun is actually doing above this spot. The clock reports Indian Standard Time, which is drawn from the meridian at 82.5 degrees east, running through eastern Uttar Pradesh. Jaipur lies at about 26.91 degrees north and 75.79 degrees east, nearly seven degrees west of that reference line. At four minutes of solar time per degree, the sun does not reach its highest point over the city until roughly twenty-seven minutes after the clock says noon. To read the sundial as IST, you add that twenty-seven minutes.

Twenty-seven minutes, and a correction that moves

There is a second correction, and it is the more interesting one. Solar noon does not arrive at the same clock time every day even at a fixed longitude, because the Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and its axis is tilted. The two effects together shift true solar noon by up to about a quarter of an hour either side of the average across the year. Anyone reading the Jantar Mantar seriously has to allow for it.

Prayer timetables allow for it automatically. This is why Dhuhr does not sit at a fixed clock time month after month, and why a table has to be recomputed for each date rather than derived once and reused. The twenty-seven minute longitude offset is permanent; the smaller correction is what makes the figures drift slightly even in weeks when the days are barely changing length.

How long the shadow has to grow

Asr is the one prayer where two different published times can both be defensible, because the disagreement is a matter of law rather than of astronomy. Both positions measure from the same baseline, the shadow an upright object casts at solar noon, and differ only on how far it must then extend.

• The Hanafi position waits until the shadow has grown by twice the object's own length beyond the noon shadow.
• The Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali position accepts one further length.

The Hanafi time is always later, in practice by forty minutes to an hour, and the interval stretches through the winter when the noon sun is low and the baseline shadow already long. The Asr on this page uses the Hanafi threshold, which is what most mosques in Jaipur and most Muslims in India follow. If your masjid takes the Shafi'i position, its Asr will come substantially earlier than the figure here; take it from them rather than from this table. Nothing else in the timetable is affected by the disagreement.

The dawn and night angles in use

Fajr and Isha have no shadow available to them, so they are fixed by how far the sun has dropped below the horizon. That depth is a convention decided by scholars, not a measurement, which is exactly why different apps disagree. This page applies the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi parameters, eighteen degrees at dawn and eighteen at nightfall, the standard in general use across India and the subcontinent. Further background sits on the India prayer times hub.

When a phone shows a Fajr some minutes away from the local announcement, the method setting is the first thing to inspect. Once that matches, the remaining difference is normally iqama practice, the gap each congregation leaves between the adhan and the start of prayer, which is a local decision and forms no part of the astronomy.

A seasonal range you can feel

At close to twenty-seven degrees north, Jaipur sits far enough from the equator for the year to make itself felt in the table. The difference between the longest and shortest day here is roughly three and a half hours, against a little over two in Hyderabad and about an hour in Kochi. Fajr travels a long way between midsummer and midwinter, and Maghrib travels a comparable distance in the opposite direction.

All of that is the sun. India keeps a single offset of five and a half hours in every month and has never used daylight saving, so nothing in this table ever jumps by an hour on a changeover weekend. A printed monthly sheet stays valid from the first day to the last.

Sehri, iftar, and a fasting day that changes length

Fajr ends sehri and Maghrib opens iftar. Sunrise appears in the table but bounds neither; it marks the last moment at which Fajr may still be prayed. Because the dawn angle used here is a deep one, a real stretch of time separates Fajr from sunrise, and treating sunrise as the close of the pre-dawn meal is a serious mistake rather than a marginal one.

Jaipur's wider seasonal range matters more during Ramzan than it does in the south. When the month falls in summer the roza is appreciably longer than it is for anyone in Kerala or Tamil Nadu; when it falls in winter it is shorter. The length also changes measurably between the first day of the month and the last. The monthly Jaipur table is the practical way to see that rather than working from a single day's figures.

Jumu'ah inside the walls

Jumu'ah replaces Dhuhr for those attending, and the adhan follows the Dhuhr time listed above. The older congregations in the walled city, including the Jama Masjid, fill well before the khutbah starts, and its beginning and length are the imam's to set. Anyone praying at home prays Dhuhr in the ordinary way at the listed time.

Which direction, and which other pages

Use the Qibla direction tool to resolve the direction from where you actually are, rather than relying on a bearing quoted for a different city. From anywhere in India it lies broadly westward, but the precise line changes across the country and phone compasses are easily deflected indoors by steel and reinforced concrete. Ramzan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar. The nearest tables to this one are Delhi prayer times, about six minutes earlier, and Ahmedabad prayer times.