🇧🇩 Dhaka

Dhaka uses the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi method (method 1 in our calculator), an 18°/18° Fajr-and-Isha convention published by Bangladesh's Islamic Foundation and used by Baitul Mukarram, the national mosque, along with the older Mughal-era congregations of Old Dhaka. The Karachi method is the regional South Asian standard, shared with Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, and was adopted in Bangladesh after independence in 1971 partly to align the new country's daily timetable with neighbouring schedules and partly because the 18-degree Fajr angle behaves well at Dhaka's 23.8°N latitude. The Islamic Foundation, a statutory body under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, publishes the official annual calendar that smaller mosques and broadcasters mirror, and most Bangladeshi prayer-time apps default to it. Apps configured for Egyptian or Muslim World League conventions will show Fajr and Isha drifting by a handful of minutes from the official timetable.

Prayer times in Dhaka shift modestly across the year because the city sits at 23.8°N, close to the Tropic of Cancer and not far from the equator, so day length varies less than in higher-latitude capitals. In late June, Fajr is called shortly before 04:00 and Isha around 20:00, producing a daylight fast of roughly fourteen hours during a summer Ramadan. By late December the gap between Fajr and Maghrib compresses to about eleven hours, with sunrise around 06:35 and Maghrib slipping to 17:15. The seasonal swing is therefore noticeable but far gentler than at 40°N or higher. The bigger practical disruption is the monsoon between June and September, when heavy cloud cover makes adhan-by-eye impossible and worshippers rely entirely on calculated tables. The Islamic Foundation issues monthly timetables to absorb the gradual drift.

Yes, Bangladesh is overwhelmingly Muslim-majority — roughly 91 percent of the country's 170 million population identifies as Muslim, the vast majority following the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam with a Sufi devotional inheritance. Dhaka itself is home to several million Muslims and has been a centre of Islamic life since the Mughal expansion into Bengal in the 16th and 17th centuries, leaving a dense layer of mosques, madrasas and shrines particularly in Old Dhaka. Friday is a public holiday in Bangladesh under the working week of Sunday-to-Thursday, and government offices, banks and most businesses close for Jumu'ah and Saturday. The Islamic Foundation regulates national religious affairs, oversees the Hajj quota and publishes the official prayer-time calendar. Hindus form the largest religious minority at around 8 percent, with smaller Buddhist, Christian and indigenous communities, and Islamic public observance — including amplified adhan five times a day — is universal across the capital.

Baitul Mukarram, the national mosque of Bangladesh in central Dhaka, hosts the largest Friday prayer in the country and is the principal congregation for state and civic occasions. Built in stages from 1960 onward and modelled on the Kaaba in stark cuboid form, it sits on a published capacity north of forty thousand worshippers and has been steadily expanded to absorb Friday overflow into the surrounding plaza and Paltan streets. The Star Mosque (Tara Masjid) in Armanitola and Chawkbazar Shahi Mosque, both Mughal-era buildings in Old Dhaka, host substantial weekly congregations and remain architectural anchors of the historic core. Neighbourhood mosques across Dhanmondi, Gulshan, Mirpur and the university quarter absorb the rest of the city's Jumu'ah, with khutbas almost universally delivered in Bangla with selected Arabic verses. Friday closures of government offices and the early afternoon timing structure the working week.

Prayer times differ between cities because they are calculated from the position of the sun, which depends on each city's latitude, longitude and the date. Dhaka sits at 23.8°N, 90.4°E in the Asia/Dhaka time zone, near the Tropic of Cancer, so its day-length swing is gentler than higher-latitude capitals but its sunrise, solar noon and sunset still occur at a clock time that no other city shares exactly. Two cities at very different latitudes — say London at 51°N and Riyadh at 24°N — experience twilight over very different durations, so Fajr, Maghrib and Isha can sit several hours apart even on the same calendar date. Even cities at similar latitudes drift if they sit in different time zones or follow different calculation conventions for the Fajr and Isha twilight depression angles, which is why Dhaka, Kolkata and Yangon see distinct timetables.