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49 free Lebanon trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Lebanon gave the world the alphabet, purple dye and the word for book, holds some of the oldest cities on Earth and the largest Roman temple ever built, and packs 18 recognised religions into a country smaller than Connecticut. It has been the Switzerland and the Paris of the Middle East, then a battlefield, and lately the scene of one of the world's worst financial collapses and one of its biggest explosions. This Lebanon trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-six questions run from geography (Beirut, Mount Lebanon, Qurnat as Sawda', the Beqaa, the Litani, Jeita Grotto, the cedars) through history (Phoenicia, Byblos, Tyre and Sidon, Baalbek, the Maronites and Druze, Fakhr al-Din, the Mutasarrifate, Greater Lebanon, independence in 1943, the National Pact, the civil war, Taif, Hariri, 2005, 2006, the port explosion) to culture (the flag, the pound, kibbeh, tabbouleh, mezze, arak, Fairuz, Gibran, the diaspora, ski-and-swim days). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Levant. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Lebanon?
Beirut
Greater Beirut holds about 2.4 million people, nearly half the country, and has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years.
Q 02Which northern port is Lebanon's second-largest city?
Tripoli
Tripoli, in the north, is Lebanon's second-largest city, with a Mamluk-era old town and the Crusader Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles above it.
Q 03The Phoenicians are credited with inventing what?
The oldest verified alphabet
The oldest verified alphabet is the 22-letter consonantal script of around 1050 BC from the Levantine coast; the Greeks adapted it, adding vowels, and the Latin alphabet descends from theirs.
Q 04Which ancient Lebanese city gave Greek its word for papyrus?
Byblos
Byblos, the Greek name for Gebal, was the port through which Egyptian papyrus reached Greece; 'byblos' came to mean papyrus, then 'biblion' a book, whence the Bible.
Q 05According to the Bible, which king of Tyre supplied cedar logs for Solomon's Temple?
Hiram
Tyre is also the legendary birthplace of Europa, Cadmus and Carthage's founder Dido.
Q 06Alexander the Great absorbed the Phoenician city-states after besieging which city in 332 BC?
Tyre
Tyre held out for seven months in 332 BC until Alexander built a causeway to the island city; its ruins were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1984.
Q 07Which Roman general annexed the region into the Roman Republic in 64 BC?
Pompey
Pompey deposed the last Seleucid king in 64 BC and organised the Levant, including the Lebanese coast, as a Roman province; the separate province of Phoenice was carved out under Septimius Severus.
Q 08Baalbek is famous for the ruins of Roman temples dedicated to Bacchus and which chief god?
Jupiter
Jupiter's temple at Baalbek, with six surviving giant columns, crowned the Roman city of Heliopolis, 'Sun City'; UNESCO listed the site in 1984.
Q 09The Christian community that takes its name from a hermit named Maron traces him to when?
Late 4th–early 5th century
Late 4th–early 5th century is Maron's era: the ascetic hermit died around 410 AD near Apamea, and his followers later moved into Mount Lebanon and entered communion with Rome.
Q 10The Druze religion emerged in the 11th century from a branch of what?
Shia Islam
Shia Islam, specifically its Ismaili branch, is the root of the Druze faith, which formed in Fatimid Cairo around 1017 under the caliph al-Hakim.
Q 11Which Druze emir, executed by the Ottomans in 1635, is remembered as a founder of the Lebanese entity?
Fakhr al-Din II
Fakhr al-Din II extended Druze rule over much of modern Lebanon before Sultan Murad IV sent an army against him in 1633; captured, he was executed in Istanbul in 1635.
Q 12The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate of 1861–1918 was created as an autonomous homeland for which community?
Maronite Christians
Maronite Christians, the majority in Mount Lebanon, gained a self-governing district under a Christian governor after the 1860 clashes in which thousands of Christians were killed by the Druze.
Q 13Roughly how many people in the capital and Mount Lebanon starved to death in the WWI famine?
100,000
Q 21Which country militarily occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005?
Syria
Syria kept troops in Lebanon from its 1976 intervention in the civil war until the mass protests of 2005 forced a withdrawal, completed that April; Israel held a southern zone until 2000.
Q 22Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s with financial support and training from which country?
Iran
Iran's Revolutionary Guards helped found and train Hezbollah in the Beqaa Valley in 1982, after Israel's invasion, and Tehran became its chief financier and arms supplier.
Q 23Which former prime minister was assassinated by a car bomb on 14 February 2005?
Rafic Hariri
Rafic Hariri, the billionaire who led post-war reconstruction as prime minister in 1992–98 and 2000–04, was killed with 21 others by a truck bomb on the seafront, sparking mass protests.
100,000 is the low estimate; others put the dead at up to 200,000, about half of Mount Lebanon's people, after an Allied blockade, Ottoman requisitions and a 1915 locust plague cut off food.
Q 14Greater Lebanon was established under French mandate on 1 September of which year?
1920
1920 was the year: on 1 September General Henri Gouraud proclaimed Greater Lebanon, adding the coastal cities and the Beqaa Valley to the old Mount Lebanon district.
Q 15On what date in 1943 did France release the imprisoned Lebanese government and accept independence?
22 November
Parliament had unilaterally ended the mandate on 8 November; France jailed the cabinet at Rashaya, then freed it on 22 November, the date celebrated as Independence Day.
Q 16Which Lebanese port city's Crusader Sea Castle was built on a small island in 1228?
Sidon
Sidon's Sea Castle was built by Crusaders in 1228 on a small island linked to the harbour by a causeway; the city is also famed for its soap museum.
Q 17How many religious groups are officially recognised by the Lebanese state?
18
The 18 recognised sects are twelve Christian, four Muslim, one Druze and one Jewish, and each runs its own family law and religious courts.
Q 18Lebanon's parliament has how many seats, split equally between Christians and Muslims?
128
128 seats, 64 Christian and 64 Muslim, were fixed by the 1989 accord that ended the civil war, which enlarged the chamber from 99 and replaced the earlier 6:5 Christian-to-Muslim ratio.
Q 19Why has Lebanon not conducted a national census since 1932?
The relative size of religious sects is too sensitive
The relative size of religious sects is too sensitive because parliament and top offices are shared out by confession, so no government has risked a count since the French-run census of 1932.
Q 20Lebanon's civil war lasted from 1975 until which year?
1990
1990 is the accepted end: the October 1990 ousting of the rebel army commander from Baabda palace closed fifteen years of fighting that had begun in April 1975.
Q 24The 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah was ended by which UN Security Council resolution?
1701
Resolution 1701, adopted on 11 August 2006, brought a ceasefire three days later after 34 days of fighting and expanded the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in the south.
Q 25The August 2020 explosion at Lebanon's main port was caused by how much stored ammonium nitrate?
2,750 tonnes
2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, stored in a warehouse since 2014, exploded on 4 August 2020, killing more than 200 people; Prime Minister Hassan Diab's cabinet resigned six days later.
Q 26What is Lebanon's highest point, at 3,088 m?
Qurnat as Sawda'
Qurnat as Sawda', in the northern Mount Lebanon range, is the highest peak in the whole Levant; its Arabic name means 'the black corner'.
Q 27What tree is Lebanon's national emblem, shown in green on its flag?
Cedar
Cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani, is the emblem; the Cedars of God grove near Bsharri is a UNESCO-listed remnant of the ancient forests felled since antiquity.
Q 28How big is the white central stripe on Lebanon's flag compared with each red stripe?
Twice the height
Twice the height: the central band is double each red band, a 1:2:1 ratio, with the green tree at the centre touching both red stripes.
Q 29The name of Mount Lebanon comes from a Phoenician root meaning what?
White
White is the sense of the Semitic root l-b-n, a reference to the range's snow-capped peaks, where snow can linger into early summer.
Q 30Lebanon's geography famously lets visitors do what in a single day?
Ski in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon
Ski in the morning and swim in the sea in the afternoon: slopes such as Mzaar Kfardebian sit barely an hour's drive above Mediterranean beaches.