Prayer Times
Prayer Times in Syria — All Cities
Syrian prayer times here use the convention of the Egyptian General Authority of Survey, with Fajr at 19.5 degrees of solar depression and Isha at 17.5. Syria stopped changing its clocks in 2022 and now stays on UTC+3 the whole year, which moved every winter prayer time an hour later than older printed timetables show.
Syria stopped putting the clocks back in 2022
Until 2022 Syria did what most of its neighbours did: UTC+2 through the winter, UTC+3 through the summer, with two changeover weekends every year. In October 2022 the country stopped putting the clocks back, and it has held UTC+3 continuously since. There is no longer a spring or an autumn weekend on which the entire timetable moves by an hour.
This was not a cosmetic change for prayer times. The astronomical events are untouched, because the sun rises and sets exactly as it always did, but the clock reading printed against each of them moved. Through the winter half of the year, every Syrian prayer time now falls an hour later on the clock than the same date would have shown before the change. Summer times were already on UTC+3 and were unaffected.
The practical warning concerns older material. A printed timetable, a wall calendar or an app that still assumes a winter offset of UTC+2 will be a full hour out from around late October to around late March. Our figures are generated from each city timezone identifier, so the current rule is applied automatically and there is nothing to remember or adjust by hand.
Clock time and sun time in Syria
UTC+3 is centred on the forty fifth meridian east. Every Syrian city on this site lies between roughly 35.8 and 37.1 degrees east, which is eight to nine degrees west of that centre line. Solar noon therefore arrives more than half an hour after midday by the clock, and Dhuhr arrives with it.
This is now a permanent feature rather than a summer one. Under the old arrangement the winter offset of UTC+2 put the country much closer to its own sun, and the mismatch showed up only in the warm months. Holding UTC+3 all year means Syria carries the offset through the winter as well, when the days are at their shortest. Sunrise and Fajr sit late on the clock in midwinter, and Maghrib and Isha sit late with them. It is worth knowing if you are scheduling around the prayers rather than simply observing them.
Ibn al-Shatir, the Umayyad Mosque and a very old habit of timekeeping
Damascus and Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities anywhere, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, built in the early eighth century, is one of the oldest surviving monumental mosques in the world. Prayer timing in the city has a technical history to match, and it is documented rather than legendary.
In the fourteenth century the astronomer Ibn al-Shatir served as muwaqqit at the Umayyad Mosque, the officer whose task was to determine the times of prayer by observation and calculation. He built a sundial for the mosque marked for exactly that purpose. The arithmetic on this page is done by different means, but it is doing the same job that was done from that minaret six hundred years ago: turning the position of the sun into a moment in the day.
Hanafi and Shafi'i in the same country
Both the Hanafi and the Shafi'i schools are long established in Syria, and unlike a uniformly Maliki country this shows up directly in the Asr figure. The Shafi'i position begins Asr when an upright object casts a shadow equal to its own length, over and above the shadow it already cast at solar noon. The Hanafi position waits until that shadow has doubled, which at Syrian latitudes falls roughly forty to sixty minutes later.
The times published here use the first of those, the reckoning carried by the convention assigned to Syria. That does not make the Hanafi time wrong. Both positions are long established, the disagreement is one of interpretation rather than of astronomy, and neither side holds that the other prays outside the permitted window. If your mosque announces a later Asr than the one shown here, this is almost certainly why, and the time your own mosque uses is the one to follow.
From Tartus to Aleppo: the coast, the interior and the visible horizon
The six Syrian cities cover about 2.7 degrees of latitude, roughly three hundred kilometres from Damascus in the south to Aleppo in the north, and barely more than a degree of longitude. Latitude therefore dominates, and the gap between Damascus and Aleppo changes direction through the year. Aleppo has the longer summer day and reaches Maghrib a few minutes after Damascus in midsummer, then around ten minutes before it in midwinter. Homs and Hama sit between the two in every respect.
What you see and what is calculated are not quite the same thing, and the coast is where the difference is smallest. Latakia and Tartus look west over open Mediterranean, so their sunset falls against a true sea horizon, which is close to the flat sea-level horizon every prayer calculation assumes. Damascus, Homs and Hama all have high ground to their west, and the sun drops behind a ridge some minutes before it reaches that mathematical horizon. The published Maghrib is correct on its own terms, but inland the light will often have gone before the countdown reaches zero.
The six Syrian cities on this page
We list Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Latakia, Hama and Tartus, each computed from its own stored coordinates. That is the full extent of our Syrian coverage, and we do not produce times for places whose coordinates we do not hold. Because the country is narrow in longitude, a nearby listing is usually a fair approximation: Latakia for the northern coast, Tartus for the southern coast, Homs or Hama for the Orontes corridor between the coast and the interior.
Syria has been through prolonged conflict and large-scale displacement, and mosque broadcasts, electricity and network access are not uniformly dependable. A calculated timetable relies on nothing but a date and a pair of coordinates, which is why it holds up when other references do not. Each city page carries the five prayers for today alongside sunrise, a live countdown to the next prayer, and a full month ahead that can be written down and used without a connection.
Frequently asked questions
Does Syria still observe daylight saving time?
No. Syria abolished the seasonal clock change in 2022 and has stayed on UTC+3 continuously since that October. There is no longer a weekend in spring or autumn on which the whole timetable moves. The change matters for winter, because every Syrian prayer time from roughly late October to late March now reads an hour later on the clock than the same date would have shown under the old UTC+2 winter offset. Summer times were unaffected.
Which calculation method is used for Syrian cities?
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 after sunset, so the gap between Maghrib and Isha lengthens through the summer and shortens through the winter. All six Syrian cities on this site are computed on that basis, and the method is named beneath the times table on each city page.
Why does Dhuhr fall so long after midday in Syria?
Because the clock sits well to the east of the country. UTC+3 is centred on the forty fifth meridian east, while Syrian cities lie between roughly 35.8 and 37.1 degrees east, eight to nine degrees west of that line. Solar noon consequently arrives more than half an hour after midday by the clock, and Dhuhr follows it. Since Syria now keeps UTC+3 all year, this holds in winter as well as in summer.
How different are prayer times in Damascus and Aleppo?
Only by minutes, but the direction reverses with the season, which surprises people. The two cities are about three hundred kilometres apart, almost entirely north to south. In midsummer Aleppo has the longer day and reaches Maghrib a few minutes after Damascus. In midwinter the position flips and Aleppo reaches it around ten minutes earlier. Near the equinoxes the two are very close. Homs and Hama fall between them throughout.
Why is Asr at my mosque later than the time shown here?
Most likely because your mosque follows the Hanafi position, which begins Asr once an object shadow has reached twice its own length in addition to the noon shadow. Our times use the Shafi'i reckoning, where the shadow equals the object length, and at Syrian latitudes the Hanafi time falls roughly forty to sixty minutes later. Both schools are long established in Syria and neither time is an error. Follow the one your mosque announces.