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About this map

Navigating

• Spin the globe by dragging (one finger on touch, mouse on desktop) — vertical flicks pass freely over the poles. Pinch (touch) or scroll-wheel (desktop) to zoom; on touch, twist two fingers to rotate the view around the center of the screen.
• Tap anywhere on Earth to drop a pin and open the prayer-times panel for that location: Fajr, Sunrise, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha in local time, plus the qibla bearing.
• On phones the panel is a bottom sheet — swipe it down to dismiss. A peek bar at the bottom keeps the location and current prayer visible; tap or swipe up to bring the full panel back.
• Search a city by name in the bar at the top.
• Scrub time with the slider at the bottom. The h / d button toggles between hour scrubbing (±12 h — watch the bands sweep around the world) and date scrubbing (±366 d — watch the polar caps tilt with the seasons). Tap Live to snap back to now.
• Show / hide prayers by clicking their swatches in the legend; the "Prayer shading" toggle hides the whole overlay.
• The selected location draws a gold qibla arc on the globe terminating at Mecca (small gold pin over the Hejaz). Selecting a new location replaces the arc.
• The bright disc at distance is the sun, drawn from today's solar coordinates. Scrub the date and you'll see it drift north / south — that's the axial tilt that drives the seasons.

Shia (Ja'fari) Prayer Windows

Each pixel's color comes from the sun's altitude at that location, classified into one of the five prayer windows. The Ja'fari (Shia Ithnā-Asharī) definitions, each paired with its primary Qur'ānic verse and a tradition from the Imams (peace be upon them):

Fajr

Begins when the sun is 16° below the horizon on the rising side — astronomical dawn (al-fajr al-ṣādiq, "true dawn"), distinguished from the brief vertical glow of al-fajr al-kādhib. Lasts until sunrise.

حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَكُمُ الْخَيْطُ الْأَبْيَضُ مِنَ الْخَيْطِ الْأَسْوَدِ مِنَ الْفَجْرِ"…until the white thread of dawn becomes distinguishable from the black thread of night…" — Qur'ān 2:187

وَقْتُ الْفَجْرِ حِينَ يَنْشَقُّ الْفَجْرُ إِلَىٰ أَنْ تَطْلُعَ الشَّمْسُ"The time of Fajr is from when the dawn breaks until the sun rises." — Imam Ja'far al-Ṣādiq, al-Kāfī III

Dhuhr

Begins at solar noon (zawāl). The Ja'fari waqt runs all the way to sunset, shared with Asr after shadow factor 1 — the globe paints Asr in that overlap (it's the later-starting "current" prayer), but Dhuhr is still valid.

أَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ لِدُلُوكِ الشَّمْسِ إِلَىٰ غَسَقِ اللَّيْلِ"Establish prayer at the decline of the sun until the darkness of the night." — Qur'ān 17:78

إِذَا زَالَتِ الشَّمْسُ دَخَلَ الْوَقْتَانِ: الظُّهْرُ وَالْعَصْرُ"When the sun crosses the meridian, both times enter: Ẓuhr and ‘Aṣr." — Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir, al-Kāfī III — basis of the "shared-time" ruling.

Asr

Dedicated time begins when an upright object's shadow equals its own length plus the noon shadow (shadow factor = 1, matching the Shāfi‘ī school): alt_asr = arctan(1 / (1 + tan(|lat − decl|))). Lasts until sunset.

حَافِظُوا عَلَى الصَّلَوَاتِ وَالصَّلَاةِ الْوُسْطَىٰ"Guard strictly the prayers, and the middle prayer…" — identified as ‘Aṣr in Shia exegesis. — Qur'ān 2:238

إِذَا صَارَ ظِلُّ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ مِثْلَهُ فَقَدْ دَخَلَ وَقْتُ الْعَصْرِ"When the shadow of every thing has become equal to it, the time of ‘Aṣr has entered." — Imam al-Ṣādiq, Tahdhīb al-Aḥkām II

Maghrib

Begins when the sun is 4° below the horizon on the setting side — the moment the eastern redness (al-ḥumra al-mashriqiyya) has faded, distinguishing the Ja'fari Maghrib from Sunni Maghrib at sunset (0°). Waqt extends to shar'ī midnight (the midpoint of the night), shared with Isha after the western twilight disappears.

وَأَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ طَرَفَيِ النَّهَارِ وَزُلَفًا مِّنَ اللَّيْلِ"Establish prayer at the two ends of the day and at the approach of the night." — Qur'ān 11:114

إِذَا ذَهَبَتِ الْحُمْرَةُ مِنَ الْمَشْرِقِ فَقَدْ غَرَبَتِ الشَّمْسُ"When the redness has departed from the east, the sun has [truly] set." — Imam al-Ṣādiq, al-Kāfī III — basis for the 4° offset.

Isha

Begins when the sun is 14° below the horizon on the setting side — the disappearance of the western twilight (shafaq). Waqt ends at shar'ī midnight, not at the next Fajr; after that the prayer is qaḍā' (makeup).

أَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ لِدُلُوكِ الشَّمْسِ إِلَىٰ غَسَقِ اللَّيْلِ"…until the darkness of the night (ghasaq al-layl)." — Qur'ān 17:78; Imam al-Ṣādiq glosses ghasaq al-layl as midnight in Tafsīr al-Qummī.

وَقْتُ الْعِشَاءِ حِينَ يَغِيبُ الشَّفَقُ إِلَىٰ نِصْفِ اللَّيْلِ"The time of Isha is from when the twilight (shafaq) has disappeared until midnight." — Imam al-Ṣādiq, al-Kāfī III

High Latitudes

The altitude-based calculation fails in two sun-relative ways: where the sun never reaches Fajr's −16° (|φ + δ| > 74°), or where the sun never rises at all (polar night, |φ − δ| > 90°). The cap kicks in at whichever boundary trips first — Fajr-driven on the summer side, polar-night-driven on the winter side — so the caps tilt with the season as you scrub the date.

Inside the cap the overlay fades to plain geography (per-pixel projection of a single locality's schedule isn't a meaningful coloring). Tap a polar location and the side panel still shows the schedule projected to the threshold latitude on the same longitude (the Aqrab al-Bilād ruling, the dominant Shia position per Sistani, Khamenei, Sādiq al-Shīrāzī). Other rulings — middle-of-night, sevenths, angle-based — produce different schedules and aren't shown here.

Behind the scenes

Sun position uses a simplified NOAA algorithm (~0.01° accuracy); prayer windows are classified per pixel in a GLSL fragment shader, so the bands are smooth and continuous rather than a discretized grid. Side-panel times come from Adhan.js with the same Ja'fari parameters; time zones via tz-lookup.