Mauritania Trivia
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43 free Mauritania trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mauritania is a country of sand and Atlantic surf where the Arab Maghreb meets sub-Saharan Africa: 90 percent of it lies in the Sahara, and its capital did not exist as a city until 1958. This quiz covers the geography (the Adrar Plateau, the Eye of the Sahara, the barren El Djouf, the bird-thronged Banc d'Arguin) and the history, from the Almoravids and the Char Bouba War through French West Africa, independence in 1960, the Western Sahara misadventure and the string of coups that ended only with the 2019 handover. It also digs into culture and daily life: Hassaniya Arabic, the Bidhan and Haratin, the iggawen musicians and their tidinit lute, three rounds of mint tea, the manuscript libraries of Chinguetti, the trains up to three kilometres long that haul iron ore to Nouadhibou, and the 2017 referendum that put two red stripes on the flag. Some questions are grim but essential, including the persistence of slavery decades after its abolition. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Mauritania, Nouakchott, the Richat Structure, Chinguetti, the Mauritania Railway, Banc d'Arguin and the flag, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 43 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 2021 film The Mauritanian tells of Mohamedou Ould Slahi's 14 years without charge in which prison?
Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay held Slahi from 2002 to 2016; the film draws on Guantánamo Diary, the memoir he wrote there in English he had largely learned in the camp, which US officials heavily redacted.
Q 02Mauritania's only coastline, some 750 km long, faces which body of water?
The Atlantic
The Atlantic washes Mauritania's roughly 750 km coast; its waters are among the world's richest fishing grounds, though foreign fleets have overfished them.
Q 03Mauritania's official name styles the country as what kind of state?
Islamic Republic
Islamic Republic of Mauritania has been the official name since 1958, two years before independence and two decades before Iran took the same title; Islam is the state religion.
Q 04What is the official language of Mauritania?
Arabic
Arabic is Mauritania's sole official language; French, once official too, lost that status but is still widely used in business, schooling and administration.
Q 05What is the name of the local dialect spoken by most Mauritanians?
Hassaniya
Hassaniya takes its name from the Beni Hassan, Bedouin tribes who spread over the region from the 15th century; their speech replaced the Berber languages once used there, absorbing Berber words along the way.
Q 06Ancient Mauretania, the Berber kingdom that gave Mauritania its name, lay in which region?
The Mediterranean coast
The Mediterranean coast of North Africa was ancient Mauretania; colonial officials revived the name in 1899 for a territory that does not overlap it at all, far to the south.
Q 07Which 11th-century Berber movement rose from Mauritania's deserts to build an empire reaching Spain?
The Almoravids
The Almoravids, Sanhaja Berbers from the Sahara, founded Marrakesh as their capital and ruled Muslim Spain by the 1090s.
Q 08Mauritania's Imraguen fishermen traditionally caught mullet with the help of which wild animals?
Dolphins
Dolphins drove the mullet shoals towards the shore and into the Imraguen's nets; the Imraguen fish by traditional methods from their villages inside the Banc d'Arguin park.
Q 09Mauritania was colonised in the early 20th century as part of which colonial federation?
French West Africa
French West Africa absorbed Mauritania as a full colony in 1920; Xavier Coppolani, who began the conquest in 1901, had been killed in 1905 while preparing to march on the Adrar.
Q 10Which country refused to recognise Mauritania's independence until 1969?
Morocco
Morocco claimed Mauritania as part of a 'Greater Morocco' and recognised the new state only in 1969, nine years after independence.
Q 11Who was Mauritania's first president, ousted in a bloodless coup in 1978?
Moktar Ould Daddah
Moktar Ould Daddah, president from independence, was deposed in a bloodless coup in July 1978 after a costly desert war drained the treasury.
Q 12Mauritania annexed part of which territory in the mid-1970s, then withdrew in 1979?
Western Sahara
Western Sahara's southern third, renamed Tiris al-Gharbiyya, was Mauritania's share of the former Spanish colony; Polisario raids made the war so costly that it brought down the first president, and the claim was dropped in 1979.
Q 13Which colonel ruled Mauritania for over 20 years until a coup in August 2005?
Q 21Mauritania's Cap Blanc peninsula shelters the largest surviving colony of which endangered sea mammal?
Monk seals
Monk seals, thought to be the world's rarest seals, keep their largest remaining colony at Cap Blanc; two-thirds of it died within two months in 1997, but numbers have slowly recovered since.
Q 22Mauritania's Richat Structure, a huge ring formation visible from orbit, is nicknamed what?
The Eye of the Sahara
The Eye of the Sahara spans about 40 km and was first taken for an impact crater; geologists now read the Richat Structure as a deeply eroded dome of uplifted rock.
Q 23Which metal has been mined at Mauritania's vast Tasiast open pit since 2007?
Gold
Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya
Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, in power since 1984, was overthrown in August 2005 while attending the funeral of Saudi King Fahd.
Q 14In 1999 Mauritania opened full diplomatic relations with which country, only to sever them in 2010?
Israel
Israel: Mauritania became only the third Arab League member to recognise it, then froze ties over the Gaza war in 2009 and cut them completely in 2010.
Q 15Mauritania helped found which regional bloc in 1975, then withdrew from it in 2000?
ECOWAS
ECOWAS, the West African economic community, lost a founding member when Mauritania pulled out in 2000; in 2017 the country signed an agreement to return as an associate member.
Q 16Which general led the 2008 coup and then won presidential elections in 2009 and 2014?
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz seized power in August 2008, won the 2009 and 2014 presidential votes, and was jailed for illicit enrichment in December 2023.
Q 17The 2019 election of President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani marked which first for Mauritania?
A handover between elected leaders
A handover between elected leaders had never happened since independence in 1960: coups toppled rulers in 1978, 1984, 2005 and 2008 before an elected president stepped down at his term limit for an elected successor.
Q 18What did Mauritania abolish in 1981 but make a crime only in 2007?
Slavery
Slavery was abolished by presidential decree in 1981, making Mauritania the last country on Earth to do so, but no law enforced the ban until owning slaves became a crime in 2007.
Q 19Which two groups, also known as the Black Moors and White Moors, form about 70% of Mauritanians?
Haratin and Bidhan
Haratin and Bidhan, the Black and White Moors, make up roughly 40% and 30% of Mauritanians; though the smaller group, the Bidhan have long been the socially dominant one.
Q 20Mauritania expelled tens of thousands of its black citizens during a 1989 conflict with which neighbour?
Senegal
The 1989 Mauritania-Senegal conflict began with a grazing dispute at Diawara on the river border; tens of thousands of black Mauritanians were deported to Senegal.
Gold: Canada's Kinross bought the Tasiast mine in 2010, three years after digging began, in a deal worth about $7 billion, and has expanded the desert operation twice since.
Q 24Which mineral from the Zouérat mines has been a mainstay of Mauritania's exports since the 1960s?
Iron ore
Iron ore from the mines around Zouérat has been railed to the coast since 1963; in 1974 the state nationalised the mines, until then run by a company owned by European steel and mining interests.
Q 25The Mauritania Railway links the mines at Zouérat with which port?
Nouadhibou
Nouadhibou is the port at the end of the 704 km single-track line; French engineers even bored a 2 km tunnel through granite at Choum just to keep the rails off Spanish colonial soil.
Q 26Where do many passengers ride on Mauritania's desert freight trains?
In the open ore wagons
In the open ore wagons: the trains, among the longest and heaviest in the world, haul about 200 hoppers from the Zouérat mines, and locals and adventurous tourists simply climb on top of the load.
Q 27Mauritania's Banc d'Arguin National Park is best known for hosting what?
Millions of migratory waders
Millions of migratory waders winter on the park's vast mudflats: over two million birds fly in each year from northern Europe, Siberia and Greenland.
Q 28What was added to Mauritania's flag in 2017?
Two red stripes
Two red stripes, top and bottom, were added after an August 2017 referendum; they honour the blood shed defending the country.
Q 29What colour is the field of the Mauritanian flag?
Green
The Mauritanian flag has a green field, the colour of Islam, bearing a gold crescent and star.
Q 30Mauritania's iggawen, a hereditary caste of praise-singers, are the local form of what?
Griots
Griots is the name such bards go by elsewhere in West Africa; though they sang the praises of warriors and patrons, Mauritania's iggawen themselves ranked as a low caste in Moorish society.