Prayer Times in High-Latitude Areas

Between the Areas 48.6 and 66.6 Latitude

In cooperation between the Fiqh Council (FC) of the Muslim world League (MWL) and the Islamic Crescents' Observation Project (ICOP) several meetings and a conference were organized in order to find a method to calculate the Fajr and Isha times when they disappear in some area at a certain time of the year.

The first meeting was held in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) on 08 May 2008. In this meeting all the major methods were discussed with their advantages and disadvantages, and the participants agreed to do some calculations for different methods to be discussed in the following meeting.

The second meeting was held in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) on 14 June 2008. In this meeting, more thorough discussions were conducted, and the results of the calculations were discussed. The participants agreed to have a conference in a European country in order to continue the discussion with the concerned people. Belgium was chosen to hold the conference in.

The conference was held in Brussels in 25-26 May 2009, where several scholars, astronomers and official delegations participated in the conference. At the end of the conference, the official committee formed by the FC agreed to adopt a certain method to do the calculations, and the committee members agreed that this method has the least disadvantages. Thus, the members agreed to do the calculations for different cities in Europe, and these results would be discussed in a final meeting later on. The recommendations of the conference if found below:-

The last and final meeting was held in Mecca on 01 August 2009, in this meeting the alternative prayer times using the adopted method were displayed and the members discussed the results, and finally the committee approved this method. Afterwards, the calculations were done for the major European cities, and then they were distributed by the MWL to Islamic centers in Europe. Kindly click on the below image to read the minutes of meeting.

The adopted method is called "Local Relative Estimation", and the alternative prayer times are found using the following procedure:-

1. The time span between Sunset and Isha time is found for each day the actual Isha time exists. Lets call this "Isha Length".
2. The time span between Sunset and Sunrise is found for each day the actual Isha time exists. Lets call this "Night Length".
3. The percentage of Isha Length to Night Length is found for each day the actual Isha time exists. Lets call this "Isha Percentage".
4. Now we will end up with many Isha Percentages, so the average Isha Percentage is found. Lets call this "Average Isha Percentage".
5. When Isha prayer time disappears on a certain day, this percentage will be applied to find the alternative Isha Prayer Time.
6. The same Average Percentage is used to find the alternative Fajr Time.
7. If the above mentioned procedure is used directly in the first day the Isha/Fajr disappears, then there will be a big difference in time between Isha/Fajr prayer time of the last day the actual Isha/Fajr prayer time exists and between the first day the alternative Isha/Fajr prayer time is used. Thus this procedure is not used directly when the Isha/Fajr time disappears! Instead, at the beginning of the disappearance period, the alternative Isha time is found by subtracting 5 minutes from the previous day (and 5 minutes are added to the Fajr prayer time of the previous day). This 5-minute increment is used until there is no gap found using the Local Relative Estimation method. Same procedure is used at the end of the disappearance period.

The above mentioned procedure was added to the software Accurate Times starting form the version 5.2. So, if you would like to generate the prayer times for a high latitude areas, then please download Accurate Times, open the "Preferences" menu, enable the option "Enable Alternative Prayer Time Calculations" and then you can do the calculations for your area. The alternative prayer times will be marked by a special symbol beside the prayer time to distinguish the actual times form the alternative times. All the suggested methods and the adopted method are discussed in details in this paper. (Arabic Language)

The members of the official committee formed by the FC who attended the last meeting were:-

1. Dr. Saleh Al-Marzoqi (FC Secretary General)
2. Dr. Ahmad Bin Hmead
3. Dr. Saad Al-Khathlan
4. Mohammad Odeh
5. Dr. Ayman Kordi
6. Prof. Hassan Basorrah

Below are the prayer times for the year 2010 using the adopted method for the affected European countries:-
Belarus
Belgium
Czech
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Kazakhstan
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Sweden
UK
Ukraine

Kindly click here to read Romanian translation of this web page (by Web Geek Science)

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By Moh'd Odeh. Copyright © 1998-2009 Islamic Crescents' Observation Project (ICOP), All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission. For more information Kindly send E-mail