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60 free Azerbaijan trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Azerbaijan is a country most people can place on a map only vaguely, which is exactly what makes it good trivia. It sits where Europe meets Asia on the shore of the Caspian Sea, its capital Baku is the lowest-lying national capital on Earth, and it has more mud volcanoes than anywhere else on the planet. Add a natural gas hillside that has burned for decades, a fire temple, a 12th-century tower on the banknotes and the world's first oil tanker, and you have a lot to ask about. This quiz runs through geography, history, culture, food and sport: the treaties that split the Azerbaijanis between Russia and Iran, the 23-month republic that gave Muslim women the vote in 1918, the Nobel brothers and the Baku oil boom, mugham and the Eurovision win, plov and armudu tea glasses, the Karabakh horse, Qarabag FK and the Formula One street race. Questions range from easy (what sea does it border?) to genuinely hard (which treaty fixed the Aras as the border?). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages before publishing, so you can trust what you learn here.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of these countries does NOT share a land border with Azerbaijan?
Kazakhstan
Azerbaijan is technically landlocked: the Caspian is the world's largest lake despite its name.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan?
Baku
It is also the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the whole Caucasus region.
Q 03Baku holds what unusual distinction among the world's national capitals?
It is the lowest-lying capital, 28 m below sea level
It is also the largest city in the world lying below sea level, sitting on the shore of the Caspian.
Q 04Baku's nickname, the "City of Winds", refers to which pair of named winds that blow there in all seasons?
Khazri and gilavar
The khazri is the cold northern wind and the gilavar the warm southern one.
Q 05Nearly half of all the mud volcanoes on Earth are concentrated in which country?
Azerbaijan
They were even nominated for the New 7 Wonders of Nature; some eruptions have thrown flames hundreds of metres high.
Q 06Yanar Dag, a hillside near Baku that has burned continuously for decades, is fed by what?
A natural gas seep
Local stories say a shepherd accidentally lit it in the 1950s; others claim it has burned for 4,000 years.
Q 07Azerbaijan's long-standing nickname is the Land of what?
Fire
The name Azerbaijan itself is often traced to Old Iranian words meaning "protected by the holy fire".
Q 08The name Azerbaijan derives from Atropates, a satrap under which ancient empire?
Achaemenid
Alexander the Great reinstated Atropates as satrap of Media, and the region became known as Atropatene.
Q 09Which two treaties, in 1813 and 1828, forced Qajar Iran to cede its Caucasian territories to Russia?
Gulistan and Turkmenchay
Together they set the Aras River as the border, splitting the Azerbaijanis between Russia and Iran to this day.
Q 10Which river became the border between Russia and Iran after the 1828 treaty?
Aras
More Azerbaijanis live south of that line in Iran than in the Republic of Azerbaijan itself.
Q 11The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic of 1918 was the first Muslim-majority state to do what?
Grant women equal voting rights with men
The republic fell to the Red Army in April 1920.
Q 12How long did the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic last before the Bolshevik invasion of 1920?
23 months
As many as 20,000 Azerbaijani soldiers died resisting what was effectively a Russian reconquest.
Q 13During World War II, roughly what share of the Soviet Union's oil on the Eastern Front came from Baku?
80 percent
That is why Germany's Operation Edelweiss targeted the city in 1942.
Q 21Azerbaijan shares its shortest land border, just 15 km, with which country?
Turkey
Its longest border, over 1,000 km, is with Armenia.
Q 22Mount Bazardüzü, Azerbaijan's highest peak at 4,466 m, sits on the border with which country?
Russia's Dagestan
It is also the highest point of Dagestan, and Russia's southernmost point lies a few kilometres away.
Q 23Which is the longest river in Azerbaijan, at 1,515 km, entering the country from Georgia?
Kura
It receives the Aras as a tributary before reaching the sea; every big reservoir in the country is built on it.
Q 14Which Swedish industrial family arrived as investors in Baku's oil fields in 1873?
The Nobels
The Rothschilds followed in 1882; the Nobel brothers' oil money later helped fund the Nobel Prizes.
Q 15Azerbaijan celebrates its Day of Restoration of Independence on which date, marking the 1991 declaration?
18 October
A nationwide referendum affirmed it in December, days before the USSR formally dissolved.
Q 16Which region, with an ethnic Armenian majority, was at the centre of two wars between Azerbaijan and Armenia?
Nagorno-Karabakh
A 2023 Azerbaijani offensive ended the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, which was formally dissolved on 1 January 2024.
Q 17Azerbaijan's Heydar Aliyev earlier spent 28 years working for which Soviet organisation?
The KGB
He then ran Soviet Azerbaijan as First Secretary from 1969 to 1982 before returning to power after independence.
Q 18Who succeeded Heydar Aliyev as president of Azerbaijan in 2003?
His son Ilham
Ilham's wife Mehriban Aliyeva was later appointed the country's first vice-president.
Q 19Nakhchivan, an autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, is unusual because it is what?
An exclave cut off by Armenia
It also gives Azerbaijan its shortest international border, just 15 km long.
Q 20Which biblical figure is linked by folk etymology to the name Nakhchivan, "place of the first descent"?
Noah
The tradition holds he settled there after the Ark landed on nearby Mount Ararat.
Q 24Which animal, an endangered mountain-steppe breed, is the national animal of Azerbaijan?
The Karabakh horse
Queen Elizabeth II was given one named Shohrat by President Aliyev in 2022.
Q 25On Azerbaijan's flag, red stands for progress and green for Islam. What does the blue stand for?
Turkic identity
Red stands for progress and green for Islam; the star at the centre has eight points.
Q 26How many points does the star on Azerbaijan's national flag have?
Eight
The first 1918 flag copied the Ottoman design, which had also used an eight-pointed star until 1844.
Q 27Azerbaijani, the official language, belongs to which sub-branch of the Turkic languages?
Oghuz
It is close enough to Turkish, Turkmen and Gagauz to be mutually intelligible to varying degrees.
Q 28Since independence in 1991, Azerbaijani in the Republic has been written in which script?
Latin
The alphabet had already changed twice in the Soviet era: Perso-Arabic to Latin in the 1920s, then to Cyrillic in the 1930s.
Q 29Which is the flagship dish of Azerbaijani cuisine, of which more than 200 varieties exist?
Saffron-rice plov
Custom says a household prepares one for any guest who visits.
Q 30Azerbaijanis traditionally drink black tea from an armudu, a glass of what shape?
Pear-shaped
The name comes from armud, the word for pear; the narrow waist keeps the top cool while the base stays hot.