🇮🇳 New Delhi

New Delhi uses the University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi method (method 1 in our calculator), an 18°/18° Fajr-and-Isha convention adopted across the Indian subcontinent and published by major Delhi mosques including Jama Masjid in Shahjahanabad and Fatehpuri Masjid in Chandni Chowk. The method is the de facto regional standard for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and aligns Delhi's daily timetable with Lahore, Karachi and Dhaka so cross-border families and travellers see consistent times. The 18-degree Fajr angle behaves well at Delhi's 28.6°N latitude, neither pushing Fajr too early in summer nor compressing it in winter. Local imam committees, the Delhi Waqf Board and most printed Islamic calendars distributed through Old Delhi mosques use this convention. Apps that default to Egyptian or Muslim World League will show Fajr and Isha shifted by a few minutes from what the city's mosques announce on their boards.

Prayer times in New Delhi shift most between the long summer days of May and June and the short winter days of December and January, with the swing driven by Delhi's 28.6°N latitude. In June, Fajr is called shortly before 04:00 and Isha after 20:30, stretching the daylight fast in Ramadan to over fifteen hours when the month falls in summer. By late December, sunrise slips toward 07:10, Maghrib arrives around 17:30, and the gap between Fajr and Maghrib compresses to roughly ten and a half hours. The monsoon between July and September produces dramatic cloud cover that makes adhan-by-eye difficult, so worshippers rely entirely on calculated tables. 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, and most Delhi mosques print monthly timetables to capture the gradual shift.

Muslims make up roughly 12–13 percent of Delhi's population, which is significant in absolute terms because India is home to one of the world's three largest Muslim populations at over 200 million. Delhi has been a centre of Islamic political power, scholarship and Sufi devotion since the Delhi Sultanate of the 13th century, and the Mughal capital Shahjahanabad — today's Old Delhi — left behind a dense network of mosques, madrasas and shrines. The community is concentrated in Old Delhi, Nizamuddin, Jamia Nagar, Okhla and parts of east Delhi, with mixed neighbourhoods elsewhere. The Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah, where the 14th-century Chishti saint Nizamuddin Auliya is buried, draws pilgrims year-round including non-Muslim visitors. Major institutions include Jamia Millia Islamia university, the Delhi Waqf Board and several large madrasas, and the qawwali tradition still performed at Nizamuddin remains a recognised cultural inheritance.

The Jama Masjid of Old Delhi, completed in 1656 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, hosts the largest Friday prayer in the Indian capital and is one of the largest mosques in the country, with a courtyard that can hold around 25,000 worshippers. The red sandstone and white marble building, also called Masjid-i-Jahan-Numa, sits on a raised plinth in Chandni Chowk a short walk from the Red Fort, and its three gateways open onto the Old Delhi bazaars. Fatehpuri Masjid at the western end of Chandni Chowk, built in 1650 by one of Shah Jahan's wives, is the second-most-attended Friday congregation. The Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah complex hosts large gatherings particularly for the Thursday qawwali sessions, and neighbourhood mosques across Jamia Nagar and Okhla absorb the rest of the city's weekly Jumu'ah congregation, with khutbas typically delivered in Urdu.

Prayer times differ between cities because they are calculated from the position of the sun, which depends on each city's latitude, longitude and the date. New Delhi sits at 28.6°N, 77.2°E in the Asia/Kolkata time zone, so its solar noon, sunset and twilight angles produce a particular 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 and Isha can sit several hours apart even on the same calendar day. Even cities at similar latitudes drift if they sit in different time zones, follow different calculation conventions for the Fajr and Isha twilight depression angles, or apply different rules for high-latitude summer adjustment, which is why Delhi, Karachi and Dhaka see slightly different timetables despite using the same Karachi method.