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59 free Iraq trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Iraq is the land between the rivers where cities, writing, the wheel and written law were invented, where Babylon and Nineveh rose, where the Abbasids built the round City of Peace and the House of Wisdom, and where the last century has brought a British-made monarchy, revolutions, Saddam Hussein, three wars and a hard-won recovery. This Iraq trivia quiz covers all of it. Fifty-three questions run from geography (Baghdad, the Tigris and Euphrates, Basra, the marshes, Cheekha Dar, Kurdistan) through ancient history (Sumer, Uruk, the Ziggurat of Ur, Hammurabi, the Ishtar Gate, Gilgamesh, Hatra) and the Islamic and Ottoman centuries (al-Mansur, Samarra, the Mongols, Suleiman) to the modern state (Faisal I, 1932, the 1958 coup, the Ba'ath, Halabja, Kuwait, 2003, ISIS) and culture and sport (the dinar, the flag, masgouf, the Lions of Mesopotamia). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the region. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Iraq?
Baghdad
Baghdad is Iraq's capital and largest city; founded as the Abbasid capital in 762, it is home to several million people, roughly a fifth of the national population.
Q 02Ancient Mesopotamia lay between which two rivers, both of which run through Iraq?
Tigris and Euphrates
The Tigris and Euphrates rise in eastern Turkey and flow south-east across Iraq; the Greek name Mesopotamia means 'between the rivers'.
Q 03Which civilisation, which emerged in southern Iraq around 6000-5000 BC, is recognised as the world's earliest?
Sumer
Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, built the first true cities and devised cuneiform, the earliest known writing system, by around 3200 BC.
Q 04Which Mesopotamian city may have had 50,000 residents at its peak around 3100 BC?
Uruk
It gives its name to the Uruk period and led the early urbanisation of Sumer.
Q 05Which Mesopotamian poem is the world's oldest surviving example of narrative literature?
Epic of Gilgamesh
The Epic of Gilgamesh grew from five poems of around 2100 BC into a combined Akkadian epic, best known from tablets found at Nineveh; it includes a great-flood story.
Q 06Which British archaeologist led the 1920s–30s excavation of the Great Ziggurat of Ur?
Leonard Woolley
Leonard Woolley directed the joint British Museum and Penn Museum excavation at Ur from 1922 to 1934, clearing the ziggurat and uncovering the Royal Cemetery and its gold treasures.
Q 07The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, composed around 1753 BC, is displayed in which museum?
The Louvre
The Louvre in Paris holds the basalt stele; French excavators found it at Susa in Iran in 1901-02, where an Elamite king had carried it off as plunder some 600 years after it was made.
Q 08The Ishtar Gate, with its blue glazed bricks, was ordered by which king?
Nebuchadnezzar II
Nebuchadnezzar II had the Ishtar Gate built around 575 BC as the eighth gate of his capital; its reconstructed facade, with bulls and dragons in relief, stands in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.
Q 09Which Biblical structure was the ziggurat of the ancient city near Hillah said to inspire?
The Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel story in Genesis is widely linked to Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Marduk in that city, a stepped tower roughly 90 metres tall.
Q 10Which fortified caravan city in northern Iraq is the richest archaeological site of the Parthian Empire?
Hatra
Hatra, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Jazira desert, flourished in the first and second centuries AD as a fortified caravan city before the Sasanian king Shapur I destroyed it in AD 241.
Q 11Which Abbasid caliph founded Iraq's present capital in 762?
Al-Mansur
Al-Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph, founded the city in 762 as Madinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, laying it out as a walled circle about 2 km across.
Q 12What was the Abbasid academy that made the capital an Islamic Golden Age hub called?
House of Wisdom
The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) was a library and translation centre where Greek, Persian and Indian works were rendered into Arabic; it peaked under al-Ma'mun in the early 9th century.
Q 13The Great Mosque of Samarra is famous for a 52-metre minaret of what distinctive shape?
A spiral cone
Q 21Who became prime minister after the 14 July Revolution of 1958 overthrew Iraq's monarchy?
Abd al-Karim Qasim
Abd al-Karim Qasim, a brigadier in the Free Officers, took the premiership after the coup in which the king, the crown prince and Nuri al-Sa'id were killed; the Ba'ath toppled and shot him in February 1963.
Q 22Who became president when the Ba'ath Party seized power in the 17 July Revolution of 1968?
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Ba'athist general and kinsman of Saddam from Tikrit, held the presidency from 1968 until Saddam formally replaced him on 16 July 1979.
Q 23The 1975 Algiers Agreement between Saddam and the Shah settled a dispute over which waterway?
A spiral cone, the Malwiya minaret has a ramp winding anticlockwise up a tapering tower; caliph al-Mutawakkil built it in 848-851, when the mosque was the world's largest.
Q 14Who captured and sacked the Abbasid capital in 1258, ending the dynasty's rule in Iraq?
The Mongols
The Mongols under Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, besieged the city for under two weeks in early 1258, executed the caliph al-Musta'sim and slaughtered much of the population.
Q 15Which Ottoman sultan conquered Iraq in 1534?
Suleiman I
Suleiman I, the Magnificent, took the city from the Safavids in 1534 during his first Persian campaign; the Safavids retook it in 1624 before Murad IV won it back in 1638.
Q 16From 1749 to 1831 Iraq was ruled with great autonomy by a Mamluk dynasty of what origin?
Georgian
Georgian by origin, the mamluks were Caucasus-born slave-soldiers converted to Islam and trained in the pasha's household; the Ottomans ended the dynasty by deposing Dawud Pasha in 1831.
Q 17Which three former Ottoman provinces did Britain merge into the mandate that became Iraq?
Mosul, Baghdad and Basra
Mosul, Baghdad and Basra were the three Ottoman vilayets; Britain took the capital in March 1917, and the San Remo conference assigned it the mandate in April 1920.
Q 18Whom did the British install as king of Iraq on 23 August 1921?
Faisal I
Faisal I, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca and Britain's ally in the Arab Revolt, was crowned after a plebiscite; he reigned until his death in Switzerland in 1933.
Q 19In which year did Iraq gain formal independence and join the League of Nations?
1932
Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations on 3 October 1932, the first former mandate to gain independence; the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty had kept British bases and oil rights.
Q 20How old was the boy-king who inherited Iraq's throne in 1939?
3
Faisal II was 3 years old when his father Ghazi died in a car crash; his uncle Abd al-Ilah served as regent until the king came of age in May 1953.
Shatt al-Arab
The Shatt al-Arab, formed where the two great rivers meet, was the issue; Iraq accepted the thalweg (mid-channel) line as the border, and Iran in return ended its support for the rebellion in Iraq's north.
Q 24The Halabja attack of 16 March 1988 killed thousands of Kurds with what kind of weapon?
Chemical weapons
Chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents, were dropped on Halabja by Iraqi aircraft, killing an estimated 3,200-5,000 people in the largest such attack on a civilian area.
Q 25On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded and annexed which country as its "19th governorate"?
Kuwait
Kuwait was overrun in two days; Saddam accused it of overproducing oil and of slant-drilling into an Iraqi field, and wanted its loans from the war with Iran written off.
Q 26The 1991 Gulf War coalition's ground assault against Iraqi forces lasted roughly how long?
100 hours
The ground war lasted about 100 hours: it began on 24 February 1991 and President Bush declared a ceasefire on 28 February after Iraqi forces had been driven out.
Q 27On what date in 2003 did the US-led coalition invade Iraq?
20 March
The invasion began on 20 March 2003 with air strikes on the capital; the city fell on 9 April, when the statue of Saddam in Firdos Square was pulled down.
Q 28In which Iraqi city did the Islamic State's leader proclaim a caliphate in July 2014?
Mosul
Mosul fell to the group in June 2014 after Iraqi army units collapsed; its leader then preached from the city's al-Nuri Mosque, and some 500,000 residents fled.
Q 29How many governorates does Iraq have alongside its single federal region?
19
Iraq has 19 governorates after parliament voted in April 2025 to carve Halabja out of Sulaymaniyah; four of them together form the federal Kurdistan Region.
Q 30Which city is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region?
Erbil
Erbil, whose ancient citadel mound is a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government and its parliament.