Islam
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195 free Islam trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Islam trivia questions with answers. From the Five Pillars of faith to the scientific breakthroughs of the Islamic Golden Age, Islam has shaped world history, culture, and knowledge for over 1,400 years. This quiz explores the religion's core beliefs, sacred texts, magnificent architecture, and the scholars who advanced mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. The set is arranged from easy to hard: the opening questions suit newcomers and classroom use, while the later hard Islamic trivia questions on individual surahs, early caliphs, hadith collections and Golden Age scholars will challenge students of Islamic history and anyone preparing a mosque or community quiz night. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 195 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who is the only woman the Quran mentions by name?
Mary
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the only woman the Quran names, and its nineteenth chapter bears her name; Eve appears in the text only as Adam's wife, never by name.
Q 02Ramadan, the month of fasting, is which month of the Islamic calendar?
Ninth
Ninth: the Islamic year is shorter than the 365-day year, so Ramadan falls a little earlier each year and passes through every season in a cycle of about 33 years.
Q 03Mecca, home of the Kaaba, lies in which region of western Saudi Arabia?
Hejaz
Hejaz, the Red Sea strip around Mecca, was briefly a kingdom of its own: the sharif of Mecca proclaimed himself its king in 1916, and Ibn Saud conquered it in 1925 on the way to founding Saudi Arabia.
Q 04How many times a day are Muslims required to pray?
Five
Five: tradition holds that fifty daily prayers were first commanded during Muhammad's Night Journey, and that the number was cut to five after Moses urged him to plead for fewer.
Q 05Eid al-Adha falls on the tenth day of which Islamic month?
Dhu al-Hijjah
Dhu al-Hijjah means 'the month of the pilgrimage': the Hajj takes place in its second week, and the feast marks the culmination of the pilgrimage rites.
Q 06What is the Islamic declaration of faith called?
Shahada
The Shahada declares that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his messenger; reciting it aloud, sincerely and with understanding, is what makes a person a Muslim.
Q 07Which prophet-king does the Quran say was taught the language of birds?
Solomon
Solomon, David's heir in the Quran, says he has been taught the language of birds; in one scene he overhears an ant warning its colony to get out of his army's way, and smiles.
Q 08What does the Arabic word 'Islam' mean?
Submission
Submission: 'Islam' means surrender to the will of God, and 'Muslim' means one who surrenders; 'salam', peace, grows from the same root but is a different word.
Q 09What is the name of the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan?
Eid al-Fitr
Eid al-Fitr, meaning 'Festival of Breaking the Fast,' is celebrated at the end of Ramadan. It typically lasts one to three days and involves special prayers, feasting, and giving to charity.
Q 10What is the Islamic term for charitable giving, one of the Five Pillars?
Zakat
Zakat is the obligatory alms, distinct from voluntary sadaqah; the word carries the sense of purity, because giving a share to the poor is held to cleanse the wealth that remains.
Q 11Which sultan of Egypt and Syria crushed the Crusader army at the Horns of Hattin in 1187?
Saladin
Saladin, a Kurdish-born sultan, destroyed the Crusader field army at Hattin in July 1187 and took Jerusalem that autumn, letting its Christians leave on payment of a ransom.
Q 12What is the name of the angel who revealed the Quran to Prophet Muhammad?
Gabriel
Gabriel, Jibril in Arabic, is said to have first appeared to Muhammad in 610; shaken by the encounter, he hurried home, where his wife Khadija reassured him that the revelation was genuine.
Q 13How many chapters (surahs) are in the Quran?
114
114 surahs make up the Quran, ordered roughly from longest to shortest rather than by date of revelation, so the book does not read as a chronological story.
Q 21Which Islamic scholar is known as the 'father of algebra'?
Al-Khwarizmi
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850 CE) wrote 'The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing,' which introduced algebra as a distinct mathematical discipline. The word 'algebra' derives from 'al-jabr' in the title.
Q 22Which American activist broke with the Nation of Islam and made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964?
Malcolm X
Malcolm X came home from the Hajj as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, saying that worshipping beside Muslims of all colours had changed how he saw race; he was assassinated in 1965.
Q 23What famous palace complex in Granada, Spain, is a masterpiece of Islamic architecture?
The Alhambra
Q 14What event does Eid al-Adha commemorate?
Abraham offering to sacrifice his son
Abraham offering to sacrifice his son gives Eid al-Adha, the 'Festival of Sacrifice', its name: a ram was accepted in the boy's place, and families still share an animal's meat with the poor.
Q 15What is the name of Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE?
Hijra
The Hijra took Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 after years of persecution; the Islamic calendar counts its years from it, which is why its dates are marked AH.
Q 16What is the first surah (chapter) of the Quran?
Al-Fatiha
Al-Fatiha, 'The Opening', is a seven-verse prayer for guidance that begins every cycle of the daily prayers and is closed with 'amin'; it is often likened to the Lord's Prayer.
Q 17The split between Sunni and Shia Muslims began as a dispute over what?
Who should lead after Muhammad
Who should lead after Muhammad died in 632 divided the community: one party held that leadership belonged within his family, the other that the community should choose for itself.
Q 18What is the term for Islamic religious law based on the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet?
Sharia
Sharia is held to be God's law itself, while fiqh is the jurists' human effort to work out its rulings, which is why the legal schools can disagree with one another and all be accepted.
Q 19What is the raised pulpit from which the imam delivers the sermon in a mosque called?
Minbar
The minbar began humbly: Muhammad first preached leaning against a palm trunk in his mosque, and later from a wooden seat with two steps, which his successors kept as a symbol of authority.
Q 20During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn until what time?
Sunset
During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink from dawn until sunset, breaking the fast each evening, often with dates and water.
The Alhambra takes its name from the Arabic for 'the red', probably after the reddish rammed earth of its walls; the Nasrid sultans built it on a hill above Granada in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Q 24Which Islamic scholar wrote 'The Canon of Medicine,' a medical encyclopedia used in Europe for centuries?
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) had memorised the Quran by ten and was treating patients in his teens; after he cured the Samanid ruler of Bukhara, he was rewarded with the run of the royal library.
Q 25What is the name of the pre-dawn meal eaten before fasting during Ramadan?
Suhoor
Suhoor must be finished before first light, when the day's fast begins; a saying of Muhammad recorded by al-Bukhari urges believers to eat it, 'as there is a blessing in it'.
Q 26What is the term for food that is permissible under Islamic dietary laws?
Halal
Halal means 'permissible'; for meat it requires that God's name be invoked and the animal's throat cut in one swift stroke, so that the blood drains away.
Q 27In Islamic belief, which beings did God create from smokeless fire?
Jinn
Jinn, the Quran says, were made from smokeless fire as humans were from clay; its 72nd chapter is named after them and tells of a group who listened to the Quran being recited and believed.
Q 28What is the recorded collection of Prophet Muhammad's sayings and actions called?
Hadith
Hadith are the recorded reports of Muhammad's words and deeds, sifted by later scholars: al-Bukhari is said to have examined some 600,000 and accepted only about 7,000 as sound.
Q 29Kairouan, a holy city of Islam, lies in which country, once home to Carthage?
Tunisia
Tunisia's Kairouan was founded around 670 by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi as the camp from which North Africa was conquered; it grew into one of the holy cities of Islam.
Q 30Which Islamic ornament style is built from scrolling, interlacing stems and leaves?
Arabesque
Arabesque ornament spread across mosques and manuscripts because Islamic religious art avoided human and animal figures, leaving plant scrolls and geometry to carry the decoration.