SalahNowSri Lanka prayer times
The ACJU publishes official timetables for thirteen regions of the island. The app does not use them yet — this page explains what it calculates instead and why Sri Lankan times barely move across the year.
Scope of this claim
The All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU) publishes official prayer timetables for Sri Lanka, divided into thirteen regional zones with a separate document for each month. The app does not use those documents, so the times on these pages are calculated and may differ from the ACJU’s published minutes. No zero-minute claim is made for Sri Lanka.
Cities
Cities are listed by population. A city that is missing has no entry in the prayer-times database yet.
Calculation and source
- Institution
- All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU)
- Method
- University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi
- Fajr 18°, Isha 18° — a calculation, not the ACJU’s published table.
- Asr
- Asr uses the shadow ratio of one, matching the predominantly Shafi practice on the island; the ratio of two is selectable in the app and moves only Asr.
- Precaution minutes
- None. The app adds no precaution minutes of its own; the Karachi preset carries a single built-in minute on Dhuhr so the time can never fall before true zawāl.
- Time zone
- Sri Lanka does not observe daylight saving. Being close to the equator, the island has remarkably little seasonal movement: Fajr and Maghrib shift by only a few dozen minutes across the whole year, far less than in South Asia’s northern cities. The east–west spread is small too, but Jaffna, Colombo and Trincomalee are still calculated from their own coordinates rather than from a single point.
- Hijri calendar and crescent
- The ACJU announces the sighting of the crescent for Ramadan and the two Eids in Sri Lanka. The Hijri date shown in the app is calculated and can sit a day away from the ACJU’s announcement.
The recognised scholarly body for Sri Lankan Muslims. It publishes regional prayer timetables and announces the Hijri dates; its timetables are not yet used by the app.
Sri Lanka prayer times
The ACJU timetable, and why it is not here yet
The All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama is the recognised scholarly body for Sri Lankan Muslims, and it publishes prayer timetables that divide the island into thirteen regional zones. The publication format is the obstacle rather than the authority: each zone gets a separate document for each month, which is a very different thing to ingest than a single annual table or an API. Until those documents are read into the app, these pages are calculated, and each row says so. When the ACJU tables are integrated, the source label will name the institution instead.
The calculation used in the meantime
Sri Lankan Muslim practice sits at an interesting junction: the school followed on the island is predominantly Shafi, while the calculation conventions in circulation come largely from South Asia. These pages reflect both. The fajr and isha angles are the eighteen-degree pair associated with the University of Islamic Sciences in Karachi, and Asr uses the Shafi threshold of a single shadow length. That combination is closer to what a Colombo mosque actually calls than either a purely South Asian or a purely Arab preset would be.
Why Sri Lankan times barely move across the year
At six to ten degrees north, Sri Lanka sits close enough to the equator that day length is nearly constant. Over a full year Fajr drifts by well under an hour and Maghrib by a similar amount, where a city at forty degrees north would see several hours of swing. One practical consequence is that a printed annual card stays usable in Sri Lanka far longer than it would further north — and another is that a mistake in the calculation is harder to notice, because nothing looks obviously out of season.
Coverage on the island
The Sri Lankan places listed here, from Colombo and Kandy to Jaffna and Trincomalee, come from the app’s prayer-times database, and nothing on this hub is invented to fill the list out. If your town is not listed, choose the nearest listed place on the same coast: the east and west of the island are several minutes apart at sunrise and sunset.
Questions
Does Sri Lanka have official prayer times?
Which Asr ratio do these pages use?
Why do the times change so little through the year?
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