Athan (Azan) Basic

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on October 14, 2012

Athan, also spelled Azan, Azaan, and Adhan, is Islam's daily call to prayer. Athan (Azan) Basic from Islamic Finder is a free tool that helps Muslims perform daily devotions wherever they are in the world. Muslim prayer depends on accurate knowledge of the time and the individual's location, both in relation to Mecca and to the Sun. All you need to do is establish your location in the world and Athan (Azan) Basic issues automatic calls to prayer at the correct time of day, five times a day. This tool supports the Standard and Hanafi juristic methods and offers several ways to calculate sunrise and sunset. Athan (Azan) Basic is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

When you install Athan (Azan) Basic, you need to enter your geographic location from extensive lists of countries and cities. You can also enter your Latitude and Longitude, Time Zone, and Daylight Savings Time options directly. We entered our city and clicked Save. The program's simple, uncluttered interface displayed the current time, our location, and the next 6 prayer times. A message at the bottom of the interface displayed the time until the next Fajr. That's just the start of Athan (Azan) Basic's offerings, though. For instance, the Tools menu has a complete list of monthly prayer times, Athan texts, Special Islamic days, and other pop-ups. Some listed features are only available in the software's Pro version, such as Quran Recitations, Calendars, and Qiblah. The Options menu includes tools for fine-tuning Minutes and Hijri Date. You can download extra tools as well as access a variety of optional Web Services such as online world prayer times, Quranic search and commentary, photo galleries, and source code; even prayer instructions, too. A Mobile Phone app is available as well. The program's FAQ-style Help file does a good job explaining what it does and how to use it.

Athan (Azan) Basic is an excellent standalone app for devout Muslims anywhere in the world. It's also a good introduction to Athan Pro, which not only offers more Athans but also the ability to add your own Athans.