Muslim presence in Colombia stretches back further than most people expect — enslaved Muslims from West Africa were documented in Cartagena as early as the 1620s. The community as it exists today, though, was built mainly by Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian traders who arrived from the late 1800s onward, settling heavily in the desert border town of Maicao, in Bogotá, and along the Pacific port of Buenaventura, where a distinct Afro-Colombian Muslim community also took root.
Bogotá itself sits at just under 5° north latitude but at over 2,600 meters of elevation, so while its day length barely changes across the year the way it would near sea level in the tropics, its prayer schedule still differs meaningfully from Maicao's — a coastal town roughly seven degrees further north and near sea level. A schedule built for one Colombian city cannot simply be reused for another, which is why this page calculates times directly from the capital's own coordinates.
Colombia has no national body issuing its own prayer-time convention, and its congregations — from the Islamic school in Maicao to smaller associations in Bogotá — are too dispersed to have settled on a single local alternative, so the Muslim World League's standard angles serve as the widely accepted default used across the country.
Maicao's Mosque of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab is one of the largest in South America and anchors a historic Arab trading community there, even though Bogotá holds Colombia's political and economic weight.
Elevation affects the visible horizon slightly, but the bigger factor is latitude — Bogotá's position near the equator already keeps its day length close to twelve hours year-round, so seasonal swings in Fajr and Isha are modest compared with countries farther from the equator.
Not exactly — Cartagena lies on the Caribbean coast at a different latitude and at sea level, so its sunrise, Maghrib and Isha times shift by several minutes relative to the capital's calculated schedule.
Yes — Friday congregational prayer replaces Dhuhr and is scheduled close to the calculated Dhuhr time, with each mosque, including the one in Maicao, setting its own khutbah start.