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40 free Muharram trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Muharram opens the Islamic year, and one day in it, Ashura, carries two very different memories: Sunni Muslims keep it with fasting and gratitude, while Shia Muslims mourn Husayn ibn Ali and the events at Karbala in 680. These 40 questions move from the calendar itself, the sacred months and the Hijri new year, to the people and places of the Karbala story, the majlis and procession traditions of Iran, Iraq and South Asia, and the ways the month travelled to Turkey, Sumatra and the Caribbean. Every answer is checked against a cited source, and the questions describe Sunni and Shia observances as each community keeps them. Play on your phone, or print the set for a classroom or community quiz night.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ashura, sharing a root with the Hebrew word asor, is an Aramaic word meaning what?
Tenth
Tenth is all the name says: Ashura is simply the tenth day, and the same Semitic root gives Hebrew its word for ten. The date, not the event, names the day for Sunni and Shia alike.
Q 02Muharram means 'forbidden'; what has been banned during this month since before Islam?
Warfare
Warfare is the thing forbidden, and the ban predates Islam: pre-Islamic Arabs already treated Muharram as a truce month. It is one of four such sacred months in the year.
Q 03Refusing allegiance to Yazid in 680, Husayn ibn Ali left Medina for which city, where he stayed until September?
Mecca
Mecca was where Husayn waited for four months while letters from Iraq urged him to come and lead them. He left the sanctuary city in September with about fifty men.
Q 04The Arba'in pilgrimage, the largest annual gathering on earth, brings millions to Karbala how many days after Ashura?
Forty
Forty days after Ashura is the Arba'in, and up to 40 million people reach Karbala for it, most of them on foot. Commemorating the dead on the fortieth day is an old Islamic custom.
Q 05On the last day of Trinidad's Hosay, what happens to the tadjah model tombs paraded through St James to tassa drumming?
Thrown into the sea
Thrown into the sea at sunset is how the tadjahs end the observance, which indentured labourers brought to Trinidad in the nineteenth century. The paper-and-tinsel tombs are rebuilt from scratch every year.
Q 06Aşure, a grain-and-fruit pudding cooked in Turkey during Muharram, is nicknamed after which prophet?
Noah
Noah's pudding is the nickname, from a tale that his family cooked the last grains, dried fruit and nuts aboard the Ark once it came to rest. In Turkey and the Balkans the pot is shared with neighbours of any faith.
Q 07Which month follows Muharram in the Islamic calendar, with the Arba'in falling on its twentieth day?
Safar
Safar is month two of the year, and Shia mourning rituals run on through it to the Arba'in on its twentieth. Like most Islamic months, its name comes from ancient Arabian weather lore.
Q 08Muharram is one of the four sacred months in which fighting is forbidden; which month is NOT one of them?
Ramadan
Ramadan, for all its holiness, is not a sacred month in this sense: the four are Rajab on its own plus Dhu al-Qa'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah and Muharram around the pilgrimage season.
Q 09In Morocco and the wider Maghreb, Sunni Ashura customs include almsgiving, special dishes and jumping over what?
Bonfires
Bonfires are leapt over and carnivals fill the streets: Maghrebi Ashura is a festive day, far from the mourning kept on the same date in Karbala. Many families also honour their dead then.
Q 10Iranian ta'ziyeh plays staged on Tasu'a, the eve of Ashura, are often dedicated to which half-brother of Husayn ibn Ali?
Abbas ibn Ali
Abbas ibn Ali is the figure of Tasu'a in Iran: the Umayyad side offered him and his full brothers safe passage before the battle, which they refused. The play tradition peaked under the Qajar shahs.
Q 11In Sunni practice, what status does the Ashura fast hold, having been obligatory for about a year in Medina?
Voluntary
Voluntary is its status now: the Ashura fast ceased to be an obligation after roughly a year as relations with Medina's Jews soured, yet Sunni jurists still strongly encourage it, usually with the day before.
Q 12By Shia tradition, the earliest mourning gathering for Karbala was held by bereaved women captive in which city?
Damascus
Damascus, the Umayyad capital, is where the captives recounted the tragedy and wept together, the model for every later majlis. Such gatherings now fill dedicated halls for the first ten days of Muharram.
Q 13Black-clad mourners marched on Ashura 963 in the first public Karbala processions; which Shia dynasty ruled then?
Q 21The Tawwabin, Kufan supporters of Husayn who rose against the Umayyads in 685, bore a name meaning what?
The Penitents
The Penitents, led by the companion Sulayman ibn Surad, were defeated at Ayn al-Warda in January 685, but their remorse set the tone for Shia memory of Karbala. Their rising came before Mukhtar's in Kufa.
Q 22Which Umayyad governor of Kufa sent Umar ibn Sa'd's army to Karbala and ordered the Euphrates closed to Husayn's camp?
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad ran Kufa for Yazid and had already crushed the city's pro-Husayn movement before the caravan arrived. Umar ibn Sa'd took the field only after the governor threatened his governorship.
Q 23Al-Hurr ibn Yazid, whose thousand riders had intercepted Husayn's caravan near Kufa, did what on the morning of Ashura?
Buyids
The Buyids, Shia rulers of Iraq and Iran after the caliphate's decline, sponsored those processions under Mu'izz al-Dawla. Dedicated buildings for Karbala gatherings date from the same period.
Q 14The word husayniyya, for a hall built to host Muharram mourning gatherings, was coined under which Iranian dynasty?
Safavids
The Safavids held annual majalis in husayniyyas through the first ten days of Muharram, and the term for the buildings dates from their era. In Qazvin, a Safavid capital, the halls also hosted poetry gatherings and debates.
Q 15A husayniyya is an imambara in South Asia and a takyeh in Iran; what is it called in Bahrain and the Gulf?
Ma'tam
Ma'tam is the Gulf word, used in Bahrain, the UAE and neighbouring states for the same mourning hall. Iraqi Shia only began building husayniyyas in numbers in the later nineteenth century.
Q 16Ta'ziyeh, the Iranian passion play staged during Muharram, takes its name from an Arabic word meaning what?
Condolence
Condolence is the root sense, from the Arabic verb to console, and in Iran the word came to mean the staged re-enactment itself. In South Asia and the Caribbean the same word names a model tomb instead.
Q 17Tehran's Takyeh Dowlat, the Qajar court's permanent ta'ziyeh theatre, was torn down in 1947 and replaced by what?
A bank
A bank took its place after the theatre fell out of use, barely 79 years after Naser al-Din Shah built it. Ordinary takyehs were temporary, put up for Muharram and demolished when the month ended.
Q 18In Yazd, a huge cypress-shaped wooden frame is carried on Ashura in the nakhl-gardani ritual; what does it represent?
A coffin
A coffin is what the nakhl stands for, Husayn's bier, and the largest in Yazd needs several hundred men to lift. The name means date palm, after a tradition that his body was carried on palm branches.
Q 19Which Iraqi president banned the Arba'in walk to Karbala, a pilgrimage 20 million strong a decade after his fall?
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein suppressed the walk along with the other Karbala rituals, and its first year back drew about two million. Pilgrims now come from nearly 60 countries, most of them on foot.
Q 20Which son of Husayn ibn Ali survived Karbala because he was too ill to fight, later becoming the fourth Shia Imam?
Ali al-Sajjad
Ali al-Sajjad, also called Zayn al-Abidin, was spared after the battle, and his supplications are still read as al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. His aunt is said to have shielded him from execution in Kufa.
Changed sides
Hurr changed sides at dawn after reconsidering his stance, and is counted among the first of Husayn's companions to die that day. Days earlier he had refused to let the caravan turn back to Medina.
Q 24In 680, Husayn ibn Ali's caravan reached Karbala and pitched camp on which day of Muharram?
The second
The second of Muharram, 2 October 680, is when the camp went up on a desert plain some 70 kilometres from Kufa, and an army of 4,000 arrived the next day. Husayn's own force was a few dozen by most accounts.
Q 25Denied the Euphrates at Karbala, Husayn's camp went how many days without water before a sally reached the river?
Three
Three days without water preceded the sally, which managed to fill only twenty water-skins for the whole camp. The order to block the river had come from the governor in Kufa.
Q 26Husayn's head, by Fatimid tradition, was carried in 1153 from Ashkelon to which city, ahead of the advancing Crusaders?
Cairo
Cairo's al-Hussein Mosque, beside the city's great bazaar, still holds the shrine where the head is said to rest. Ashkelon had kept it for roughly 250 years.
Q 27Which companion is credited with proposing, when the Hijri era was fixed in 17 AH, that the year open with Muharram?
Uthman
Uthman, by tradition, made the successful proposal, keeping the order of months Muhammad had already used, even though the Hijra itself fell two months later in the year. A complaint from Abu Musa al-Ash'ari had prompted the reform.
Q 28Because the Hijri year is purely lunar, Muharram returns to the same solar season roughly every how many years?
33
33 solar years is about the period over which the lunar months regress through the seasons, so a Muharram in midsummer will fall in midwinter some 16 years later. No leap month exists to hold it in place.
Q 29The Quranic ban on nasi', the pre-Islamic shuffling of sacred months, was proclaimed by Muhammad on which occasion?
The Farewell Sermon
The Farewell Sermon, given on Mount Arafat on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah 10 AH, declared the postponing of months an increase in disbelief, ending a practice that could shift a truce month to suit a campaign.
Q 30Alevis in Turkey keep a Muharram mourning fast that is broken with a pot of aşure; how many days does it last?
Twelve
Twelve days of fasting end with a pot of aşure that itself often holds twelve ingredients, shared with family and friends. Alevis call the fast Muharrem Mâtemi, the mourning of Muharram.