Pakistan prayer times

No state body publishes a daily prayer timetable for Pakistan. This page explains the calculation the app uses instead, why a mosque card can sit a minute or two away from it, and which published institutional timetable you can select in the app.

Calculated · University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi

Compared with the published timetable at 100 points: 100% of 73,800 prayer-time cells within ±1 min, largest difference 1 min. Figures and method, institution by institution

The calculation was fitted to the Banuri Town timetable at these 100 city points using 2026, so agreement in that year is not an independent test. The figures compare the 2027 calculation at the same points with the institution’s perpetual timetable, without any new fitting; places outside these points were not measured.

Last checked: September 25, 2026

How these times are calculated

No single national prayer timetable is published for Pakistan: the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee announce the crescent, not the daily times. The app calculates with the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi method, the convention in common use across the country, and every calculated row on a city page says so. Precaution (ihtiyat) minutes that mosques and institutions add on top of the calculation, and timetables built on a different method, give different printed minutes.

Prayer times in major cities

Karachi Faisalabad Multan Quetta Bahawalpur Jhang Sahiwal

Lahore Rawalpindi Peshawar Sargodha Arifwala Sheikhupura Okara

Islamabad Gujranwala Hyderabad Sialkot Dera Ismail Khan Gujrat

Cities

Cities are listed by population. A city that is missing has no entry in the prayer-times database yet.

Balochistan

Chaman Khuzdar Quetta Turbat

Islamabad

Calculation and source

Institution: No published national timetable
Method: University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi; Fajr 18°, Isha 18° — a calculation, not a published table.
Asr: Asr defaults to the Hanafi shadow ratio of two, which is what the large majority of Pakistani mosque timetables print; the ratio can be changed in the app and only Asr moves.
Precaution minutes: None. The app adds no precaution minutes of its own; the precaution margins printed on mosque cards are not reproduced.
Time zone: Pakistan does not observe daylight saving, so nothing in these tables moves because of a clock change. The east–west spread still matters: on the same evening Maghrib reaches Lahore well before it reaches Quetta, which is why each city is calculated from its own coordinates rather than offset from a national reference.
Hijri calendar and crescent: Ramadan and both Eids are announced by the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee after the crescent is sighted, so the Hijri date can move by a day relative to a calculated calendar. Regional committees, most visibly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sometimes announce a different day; the app follows the national committee.

The Ministry and the Ruet-e-Hilal Committee handle the lunar calendar — the sighting of the crescent and the dates of Ramadan and Eid. Neither publishes a daily prayer timetable, and no provincial body does either.

Institutional timetable

Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia, Banuri TownWhen the published Banuri Town timetable you selected and the institution’s prayer-time rules are used, the displayed times match them with a 0-minute difference, with the Hanafi Asr ratio and personal minute adjustments set to zero.A perpetual timetable covering 365 calendar days; 29 February is not published. Five times are taken from the published table as they stand and Dhuhr follows the institution’s own zawāl-plus-five-minutes rule.Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia, Banuri Town

Where Pakistan’s prayer times come from

Pakistan has an unusually clear split between the calendar and the clock. The Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee announces when the crescent has been sighted and therefore when Ramadan and the two Eids begin, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs stands behind it. Neither publishes daily prayer times, and no provincial government does. The times people actually pray by come from mosques, madrasas and newspaper cards, each built on a calculation. Recognising that split is the honest starting point for any Pakistani prayer-time page: the calendar has a national authority, the daily timetable does not.

The method those cards share

What almost all of those cards do share is the underlying calculation. The convention set by the University of Islamic Sciences in Karachi puts Fajr when the sun is eighteen degrees below the horizon and Isha at the same eighteen degrees on the other side of the night. It travels well across the range of latitudes between Karachi and Gilgit, and it is what the majority of printed Pakistani timetables are built on. These pages use it, which is why a card built on the same angles usually sits within a minute or two of the time shown here.

Asr, and the one real disagreement

The time that genuinely varies across Pakistani timetables is Asr. The Hanafi position, followed by the large majority of mosques in the country, places Asr when an object’s shadow reaches twice its own length beyond the shadow it cast at midday. The Shafi position uses one length, which in winter can put Asr the better part of an hour earlier. These pages use the Hanafi default because that is what most Pakistani readers will recognise from their local mosque. If yours follows the other position, change the Asr setting in the app rather than assuming the whole table is wrong: the five other times are unchanged.

Precaution minutes, and reading a city page

Even two timetables using the same angles can print different minutes, because many institutions add a precaution margin so that nobody prays early — a minute or two before Fajr, a minute or two after Maghrib. Those margins are editorial decisions, not part of the calculation, and they are the usual reason a printed mosque card sits slightly away from a calculated time. The app adds none by default. On each city page you get today’s six times, the Hijri date and a monthly table, and every row carries a label saying where it came from: a published institutional table or a calculation.

Questions

Why is my mosque’s timetable a minute or two different?

Most likely a precaution margin. Many Pakistani institutions print Fajr slightly early and Maghrib slightly late so that no prayer is offered before its time. The underlying calculation is usually the same Karachi method used here.

Which Asr does the app use for Pakistan?

The Hanafi shadow ratio of two by default, matching the majority of Pakistani mosque timetables. You can switch to the Shafi ratio in the app’s prayer-time settings; only Asr changes.

Do Pakistan’s times change for daylight saving?

No. Pakistan uses a single zone at UTC+05:00 with no seasonal clock change, so the only movement across these tables through the year is astronomical.