Prayer Times in Oman — All Cities

Ibadi Oman and the shape of the prayer day

Oman is the one country where Ibadi Islam is the tradition of a large share of the population, practised alongside Sunni and Shia communities. Ibadism is an independent school with a long scholarly tradition of its own, and although visitors often assume it must produce a different timetable, on the boundaries of the five prayer windows it is broadly aligned with the Sunni schools. Fajr begins at true dawn, Dhuhr once the sun has passed the meridian, Asr when the shadow has lengthened by the agreed measure, Maghrib at sunset, and Isha once the evening twilight has gone.

Where Ibadi practice has its own character is largely in the manner of prayer rather than in the clock. Questions such as the position of the hands during standing, or the treatment of the qunut, are matters of form rather than of timing. The practical result is that an Ibadi congregation and a Sunni congregation in the same Omani town pray at effectively the same moment, and one call to prayer serves both. We publish times to the national convention and do not attempt to arbitrate between schools; anyone who follows a particular position on a disputed point should take their timing from their own mosque.

Muslim World League angles, and why Oman differs from its neighbours

Oman is calculated here with the Muslim World League convention: Fajr at a solar depression of 18 degrees, Isha at 17 degrees. That is worth stating plainly, because it separates Oman from most of the Gulf. Saudi Arabia uses the Umm al-Qura reckoning, the Emirates and Bahrain use a regional Gulf convention, and Kuwait and Qatar each have their own. Oman is the Gulf state that sits on the international standard instead.

The difference you actually feel is in Isha. Omani Isha is defined by twilight, not by a fixed count of minutes after sunset. Under Umm al-Qura, Isha stays a flat ninety minutes after Maghrib all year round. Under an angle-based method the interval breathes with the season: shorter through the Omani winter, longer in the summer months when twilight lingers. If you have moved to Muscat from Riyadh or Jeddah, this is the change you notice first, and it becomes more obvious as the year turns.

Roughly a thousand kilometres from Sohar to Salalah

Oman reaches a long way north to south. Sohar on the Batinah coast lies near 24.4 degrees of latitude; Salalah, in Dhofar, sits at just over 17 degrees, around a thousand kilometres away, with Duqm on the central coast between them. The whole country keeps a single clock at UTC+4, so that distance shows up directly in the published times rather than being absorbed by a timezone boundary.

The size of the gap changes through the year, which catches people out. Around midsummer, Maghrib in Muscat and Maghrib in Salalah are only a few minutes apart, because Salalah lying further west is very nearly cancelled by Muscat lying further north. By midwinter the two effects reinforce each other instead, and Salalah sees Maghrib roughly half an hour after Muscat. Sur, the easternmost city on our list, sits at the other end of that range and reaches Maghrib before anywhere else in the country.

Dhofar, the khareef and a horizon you often cannot see

Dhofar has a monsoon. From roughly June to September the khareef brings low cloud, drizzle and persistent mist to Salalah and the hills behind it, at exactly the time of year when the rest of Oman is clear and very hot. Cloud does not move the calculated times, since the sun is where it is regardless of what is in front of it. What it does mean is that for several months the horizon at Salalah is frequently invisible, the evening sky darkens earlier than the figures suggest and the morning brightens later. Congregations there take their timing from the mosque rather than from the look of the sky, which is the sensible course during khareef.

Which Asr are these times?

The Asr published for Omani cities uses the majority reckoning, in which the window opens once a vertical object throws a shadow one full object-length longer than the shadow it had at midday. This is the position held by the Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools, and it matches ordinary practice in Oman.

The Hanafi school does not measure it that way. It holds off until the shadow has doubled, which adds somewhere between forty minutes and an hour to the Asr time. Oman hosts a very large workforce from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, where the Hanafi school predominates. If that is your madhab, the Asr on this page will be earlier than the one you are used to at home, and the mosque serving your community is the correct reference.

The ten Omani cities on this page

We compute Muscat, Seeb, Barka, Sohar, Rustaq, Nizwa, Ibri, Sur, Duqm and Salalah, each from its own stored coordinates rather than from a regional average. Seeb and Barka sit close enough to the capital that their times run within a couple of minutes of Muscat. Nizwa, Rustaq and Ibri in the interior differ a little more. Duqm and Salalah are genuinely separate cases and should never be read off a Muscat timetable.

Open any city for today's five prayers and sunrise, with a running counter to whichever prayer comes next and a month of dates set out below it. The calculation method in force is named under the table on every page.