Prayer Times
Prayer Times in Lebanon — All Cities
Lebanese prayer times on this site are calculated with the convention of the Egyptian General Authority of Survey, which sets Fajr at 19.5 degrees of solar depression and Isha at 17.5. Lebanon is the one country in this group that still changes its clocks twice a year, and the times below follow the Sunni reckoning of Maghrib at sunset.
A country you can cross in two hours
All six Lebanese cities on this site fall inside about one and a fifth degrees of latitude and roughly one degree of longitude. Tyre in the south and Tripoli in the north are around a hundred and forty kilometres apart, and everything else sits between them. In calculation terms that is small. The spread across the whole country for any given prayer is a few minutes, not the half hour you would find in Libya or Sudan.
That does not mean one page will do for everybody, only that the reason for choosing the right page is different here. In a wide country the reason is longitude. In Lebanon it is terrain, and what the terrain does to the horizon you can actually see. The six sets of numbers are close together. What happens outside the window in Baalbek and in Tyre is not.
The clocks still change in Lebanon
Lebanon keeps UTC+2 through the winter and moves to UTC+3 for the summer, changing at the end of March and the end of October. It is the exception among the countries sharing its calculation convention, because Libya, Sudan and Syria all hold a single offset the whole year round.
One consequence deserves stating plainly. Syria abolished its own clock change in 2022 and now stays on UTC+3 permanently, so Beirut and Damascus keep the same clock through the summer and sit an hour apart through the winter. Lebanon has also had at least one episode, in 2023, in which an alteration to the spring transition was announced and then reversed within days, leaving different institutions briefly running on different clocks. Both are arguments for taking prayer times from something that resolves the offset from a timezone database on the day rather than from memory or from a sheet printed months in advance. Ours are generated that way.
A plural country and a single published timetable
Lebanon is the most religiously mixed country covered on this site. It has large Sunni and Shia Muslim populations alongside Christian communities of several denominations and a Druze community, and that plurality is a basic feature of the country rather than a footnote to it.
A timetable has to be computed on some convention, and the one assigned to Lebanon here is the Egyptian convention, which reckons Maghrib at sunset and takes Asr on the position shared by the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools. That is the Sunni reckoning, and it is what every Lebanese page on this site shows. We publish it as a calculation rather than as a ruling, and we do not adjudicate between the positions set out below.
Ja'fari reckoning, and what it changes
Ja'fari jurisprudence, followed by Twelver Shia Muslims, differs from the Sunni schools on the start of Maghrib. Where Sunni jurisprudence takes Maghrib to begin at sunset itself, the Ja'fari position generally holds that it begins somewhat afterwards, once the redness left in the eastern sky has passed overhead. In practice that places Maghrib a short interval after the sun has gone, and timetables prepared for Ja'fari practice build that interval in. Such timetables also commonly use different twilight angles for Fajr and Isha than the Egyptian convention does.
A second difference concerns when prayers are performed rather than when their windows open. Combining Dhuhr with Asr, and Maghrib with Isha, is normal in Ja'fari practice, so two prayers may be held at one gathering. That does not move the start of either window; it changes the shape of the day around them.
The figures on these pages are the sunset reckoning. If you follow Ja'fari practice, read the Maghrib shown here as the sunset moment and take the prayer itself from your own mosque or husayniyya, or add the interval your marja specifies. This matters most during Ramadan, since the two reckonings do not break the fast at the same moment.
Mount Lebanon, the Beqaa and two blocked horizons
Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre are coastal. Their western horizon is open Mediterranean, which is about as near as a real place comes to the flat sea-level horizon every prayer calculation assumes. Sunset there happens more or less when the calculation says it will.
Zahle and Baalbek do not. They lie in the Beqaa valley, with the Mount Lebanon range rising to the west and the Anti-Lebanon range to the east, and Mount Lebanon carries summits above three thousand metres. The sun rises late over one wall and disappears early behind the other. The published sunrise and Maghrib remain correct as astronomical quantities, but in the valley the visible events can sit well away from them, by considerably more than the minute or two a coastal city might notice. The contrast is sharp precisely because the calculated difference is so small: Beirut and Zahle are under forty kilometres apart and their computed times differ by barely a minute, while what you would observe from each is nothing like so close. In the Beqaa the local mosque is the more practical reference for Maghrib.
The six Lebanese cities listed here
We publish Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Zahle and Baalbek, each computed from its own stored coordinates. Note that the Tripoli on this page is Tripoli in northern Lebanon and not the Libyan capital of the same name. The two are separate pages on this site and around two thousand kilometres apart, and the mix-up is a common one.
If your town is not listed, any nearby city will be close in calculated terms, because the whole country spans only a few minutes of solar time. Choose by terrain rather than by road distance: a coastal town is best served by Beirut, Sidon, Tyre or Tripoli, and a place in the Beqaa by Zahle or Baalbek. Every page carries the five prayers for today with sunrise, a live countdown to the next prayer, a full month of dates, and the calculation method named beneath the table.
Frequently asked questions
Which calculation method is used for Lebanon?
The convention of the Egyptian General Authority of Survey, which places Fajr at 19.5 degrees of solar depression and Isha at 17.5 degrees. Both are twilight angles rather than fixed intervals, so the gap between Maghrib and Isha widens in summer and narrows in winter. Maghrib is reckoned at sunset and Asr on the position shared by the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools. The method is named beneath the table on each city page.
Does Lebanon observe daylight saving time?
Yes. Lebanon keeps UTC+2 through the winter and UTC+3 through the summer, changing at the end of March and the end of October, which makes it the exception among the countries sharing its calculation convention. It also means the offset from Damascus is not constant: Syria abolished its clock change in 2022 and now holds UTC+3 permanently, so Beirut and Damascus match through the summer and are an hour apart through the winter.
Do these times work if I follow Ja'fari practice?
Only partly, and Maghrib is where they diverge. Our times use the Sunni reckoning, which begins Maghrib at sunset. The Ja'fari position generally begins it a short interval later, once the redness remaining in the eastern sky has passed overhead, and Ja'fari timetables often use different Fajr and Isha angles as well. Read the Maghrib here as the sunset moment and take the prayer itself from your own mosque, husayniyya or marja. During Ramadan this affects when the fast is broken.
My mosque combines Dhuhr with Asr. Does that change the times shown?
No. Combining is about when a prayer is performed, not about when its window opens. Praying Dhuhr together with Asr, and Maghrib together with Isha, is normal in Ja'fari practice and the two prayers are then held at one gathering. The start times we publish are the opening of each window, computed independently of how they are grouped. We list them separately and take no position on the practice itself.
Why does the sun disappear so early in Zahle and Baalbek?
Because both sit in the Beqaa valley between two mountain ranges. Mount Lebanon rises to their west with summits above three thousand metres, so the sun drops behind the ridge well before it reaches the flat sea-level horizon that the calculation assumes, and the Anti-Lebanon range delays sunrise from the east in the same way. The published times are astronomically correct, but in the valley the local mosque is the more practical guide for Maghrib.