🇮🇶 Baghdad

Baghdad uses the Egyptian General Authority of Survey method (method 5 in our calculator), a 19.5° Fajr and 17.5° Isha convention developed in Cairo and adopted across most Arab countries from the Levant through Iraq. The Iraqi Sunni and Shia waqf authorities both publish the daily Baghdad timetable on this basis, and major mosques including Abu Hanifa Mosque in Adhamiyah and Imam al-Kadhim Shrine in Kadhimiya follow it. The 19.5-degree Fajr angle behaves well at Baghdad's 33.3°N latitude and produces values consistent with the regional convention used in Damascus, Amman and Cairo, which simplifies cross-border timetables. Iraqi state television and the Sunni Endowment Office's published calendar mirror this convention. Apps configured for Muslim World League or Karachi will show Fajr a few minutes later and Isha a few minutes earlier than what local mosques announce, while Dhuhr, Asr and Maghrib remain identical because those depend on the sun's transit and altitude rather than the twilight angle.

Prayer times in Baghdad shift most between the long summer days of June and July and the short winter days of December and January, with the swing driven by Baghdad's 33.3°N latitude. In late June, Fajr is called shortly after 03:30 and Isha around 20:30, stretching the daylight fast in Ramadan to over fifteen hours when the month falls in summer, made tougher by ambient temperatures regularly exceeding 45°C. By late December, sunrise slips toward 07:00, Maghrib arrives around 17:00, and the gap between Fajr and Maghrib compresses to roughly ten hours under cold dry winter conditions. The equinoxes in March and September are the most stable periods, when daily times drift only a minute or two from one day to the next. Sandstorms in spring occasionally darken horizons enough to alter the practical visibility of the adhan call, but published times follow the calculated tables.

Yes, Iraq is overwhelmingly Muslim-majority — roughly 96–98 percent of the country's 44 million population identifies as Muslim, split between a Shia majority of around 60–65 percent and a Sunni minority of about 30–35 percent, with smaller Christian, Yazidi, Sabian-Mandaean and other communities making up the remainder. Baghdad as the capital is religiously mixed, with Shia-majority neighbourhoods in Kadhimiya, Sadr City and parts of east Baghdad and Sunni-majority areas in Adhamiyah, Mansour and parts of west Baghdad, although decades of conflict have hardened some boundaries. The city houses the shrines of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, the seventh and ninth Twelver Shia imams, in Kadhimiya, drawing pilgrims from Iran and the wider Shia world. Friday is the official weekend with Saturday, and the five-times-daily adhan is broadcast across the city; both Sunni and Shia waqf offices coordinate state religious affairs.

Friday prayers can be attended at hundreds of mosques across Baghdad. Abu Hanifa Mosque in Adhamiyah, built around the tomb of Imam Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man — the 8th-century founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence — hosts the largest Sunni Friday congregation in the capital and is one of the most historically significant Sunni mosques in the world. On the Shia side, the Imam al-Kadhim Shrine and mosque complex in Kadhimiya, built around the tombs of two Twelver imams, draws daily and weekly congregations of tens of thousands and expands enormously during Muharram and the annual Imam al-Kadhim commemoration. Other major mosques include Umm al-Tabool, Umm al-Qura (the Mother of All Battles Mosque), Buratha Mosque and the historic Khulafa Mosque in central Baghdad. Friday khutbas are delivered in Arabic, typically starting after the Dhuhr azan around 12:00 to 13:00 depending on the season.

Prayer times differ between cities because they are calculated from the apparent position of the sun, which depends on each city's latitude, longitude and the date. Baghdad sits at 33.3°N, 44.4°E in the Asia/Baghdad time zone, so its sunrise, solar noon, sunset and twilight angles produce a daily timetable 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 hours apart 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. Baghdad, Damascus and Amman all sit between 33–34°N and use the same Egyptian method, so their timetables differ chiefly because of longitude — Baghdad's solar noon is roughly twenty minutes earlier than Amman's.