Qibla Direction: Why It Points North-East from America

The Qur'an instructs the believers, in meaning, to turn their faces towards the Sacred Mosque wherever they are (2:144). Facing the Kaaba in Makkah is a condition of the prayer, and finding that direction from anywhere on Earth is a small problem in geometry that our qibla tool solves in a second. This article explains what the tool computes, why the answer sometimes surprises people, and how to get a reliable reading from a phone compass.

The qibla is a great-circle bearing

The Earth is a sphere, and the shortest line between two points on a sphere is an arc of a great circle, the kind of path an aircraft flies. The qibla is the direction of that arc as it leaves your location. It is not the direction you would draw on a flat wall map, because flat maps distort direction the further you are from the equator.

The formula our tool uses, with your latitude φ₁ and longitude λ₁ and the Kaaba's φ₂ = 21.4225° N, λ₂ = 39.8262° E:

bearing = atan2( sin(λ₂ − λ₁), cos φ₁ × tan φ₂ − sin φ₁ × cos(λ₂ − λ₁) )

The result, taken clockwise from true north, is your qibla. Some reference bearings:

Why North America faces north-east

On a flat map Makkah is south-east of New York, so north-east looks wrong. But take a globe and stretch a string from New York to Makkah: it rises over Newfoundland, crosses the Atlantic near Ireland, passes over Europe and comes down through the Mediterranean to Arabia. From New York that string leaves heading north-east, at 58°. From Los Angeles it is even more northerly, 24°, because the shortest path runs up over Canada and Greenland.

Both the north-east (great-circle) direction and the south-east (flat-map or rhumb-line) direction have been argued for in North America, and scholars have discussed it. The great majority of mosques and apps, and the general scholarly opinion, follow the great circle as the true direction of the Kaaba. If your masjid's mihrab was set a different way, follow it when praying there.

How our tool computes it

1. It takes your coordinates from the browser's location (with your permission) or from the city you type.
2. It applies the great-circle formula above to get a bearing from true north.
3. It draws the bearing on a compass rose, and on a phone with a compass it can turn the rose with the device heading so the needle shows the qibla relative to where you are pointing. Phone operating systems normally correct the heading to true north, but the sensor itself is easily disturbed, so check it as described below.
4. It also shows the straight-line distance to the Kaaba, so you can sanity-check that the location it used is really yours.

If the browser denies location or the compass, the tool still prints the bearing for the city, and you can use any compass or the methods without a compass.

Getting a good reading from a phone compass

Phone compasses are small magnetometers, easily confused. A few habits make them reliable:

• Calibrate first. Move the phone in a figure-of-eight pattern for a few seconds, or follow the phone's own calibration prompt. Do this each time you use it in a new place.
• Step away from metal and magnets. Steel beams, radiators, car bodies, laptops, speakers, magnetic phone cases and wallet clasps all pull the needle. A reading taken next to a radiator can be 30° off. Hold the phone at chest height, away from walls, and ideally check outdoors.
• Hold it flat. Tilting the phone changes the reading on cheaper sensors.
• Take two readings in two spots a few metres apart. If they agree, trust them. If they differ by more than about 5°, something nearby is interfering.
• Magnetic declination. A plain compass points to magnetic north, which in London in 2026 is about 1° east of true north, in New York about 12° west, in Vancouver about 16° east. Phones usually apply this correction themselves; if you use a separate hiking compass, add or subtract the declination for your area, or ignore it where it is small.

A simple cross-check: at solar noon (the Dhuhr time on your timetable, minus a minute or two) the sun is due south in the northern hemisphere outside the tropics and due north in the southern hemisphere. Your shadow then points exactly north or south. Compare that with what the compass says.

How precise does it need to be?

Someone standing inside the Sacred Mosque faces the Kaaba itself. Someone far away faces its direction, and a small deviation does not invalidate the prayer according to the general view of scholars. A hadith reported by al-Tirmidhi tells the people of Madinah that what lies between east and west is a qibla, since Makkah is to their south; scholars take from it that the direction, not pinpoint accuracy, is what is required at a distance.

In practice a reading within a few degrees is more than enough, and the mihrab of an established mosque is to be followed in that mosque. Where you genuinely cannot determine the direction, you make your best estimate and pray; details of what to do if you later learn you were wrong differ between schools, so ask a scholar or imam you trust.

When you are moving

On a plane, train or ship, face the qibla as well as you can when you start and do not worry about the vehicle turning afterwards, within the views of your school. The praying on a plane or train article covers this, and prayer times when travelling covers the timing side.

If you are setting up a prayer space at home for the first time, find the qibla once, confirm it with the sun method, and mark it with a sticker or the edge of a rug. Our first steps in salah article takes it from there.