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60 free Sahara trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Sahara covers about 9.2 million square kilometres of North Africa, nearly a third of the continent, and it is the largest hot desert in the world. This quiz starts with the geography everyone half-remembers (which seas it touches, what the Sahel is, where the highest peak stands) and moves on to the numbers that make the place extraordinary: 4,300 hours of sunshine a year, sand at 83 °C, a mean annual rainfall of half a millimetre, and two recorded snowfalls in a single Algerian town. From there it heads into the desert's past and its people: the 20,000-year cycle that turns the Sahara green, the Stone Age graveyard found by a dinosaur hunter, a child mummy older than any in Egypt, the Garamantes who tapped fossil water until it ran out, the caravans of Ibn Battuta and Mansa Musa's Timbuktu, French bus services across the sand, and the lone tree flattened by a truck. Wildlife gets its due too, from the fennec fox and addax to the fastest ant on Earth. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Sahara and its landmarks, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our deserts, Egypt and Africa quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly what area does the Sahara cover, in square kilometres?
9.2 million
That makes it the third-largest desert overall, behind only the cold deserts of Antarctica and the Arctic.
Q 02The name Sahara is a broken plural of a word from which language?
Arabic
Sahra means desert, so 'Sahara Desert' is really 'Deserts Desert'.
Q 03The Sahara stretches from the Atlantic in the west to which sea in the east?
Red Sea
To the north it meets the Mediterranean, and the landscape only softens into coastal plain along the Atlantic.
Q 04What is the name of the belt of semi-arid savanna that bounds the Sahara to the south?
The Sahel
It runs right across Africa from east to west and has a short summer rainy season.
Q 05The Sahara covers about what share of the African continent?
31%
Include every area getting under 250 mm of rain a year and it would swell to 11 million square kilometres.
Q 06In Saharan geography, what is a hamada?
A rocky plateau
Sand seas are ergs, gravel plains are reg, dry valleys are wadis and salt flats are chotts.
Q 07Many Saharan sand dunes rise to more than what height?
180 metres
Only a fraction of the desert is dune field; most of it is rock and gravel.
Q 08The Tibesti Mountains, home to the Sahara's highest peak, rise mainly in the north of which country?
Chad
The peak is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano topped by two nested calderas.
Q 09Emi Koussi, the highest mountain in the Sahara, is what kind of peak?
A shield volcano
It reaches 3,415 metres and there is still fumarole and hot-spring activity on its flanks.
Q 10The Richat Structure, nicknamed the Eye of the Sahara, is roughly how wide?
40 km
Its concentric rings expose the oldest rock at the centre and Ordovician sandstone at the edges.
Q 11What kind of geological feature is the Richat Structure?
An eroded dome
An igneous intrusion pushed up the overlying layers, which were then worn down into rings.
Q 12Which part of the Sahara is called the sunniest, driest and most nearly rainless place on Earth?
The Libyan Desert
Descending air under the subtropical ridge is strongest over the eastern part of the desert.
Q 13The eastern Sahara's 4,300 hours of bright sunshine a year is roughly what share of daylight hours?
98%
The figure has been recorded at Aswan and Luxor in Upper Egypt and at Wadi Halfa in the Nubian Desert.
Q 21Botanists mark the northern limit of the Sahara by the northern limit of cultivation of which crop?
Date palm
It also matches the southern edge of esparto grass and the 100 mm rainfall line.
Q 22What drives the Sahara's roughly 20,000-year swing between desert and savanna?
Earth's axial precession
The wobble shifts the North African monsoon north or south, switching the rain on and off.
Q 23The Sahara is in a dry phase; in roughly how many years should it turn green again?
15,000 years
The idea that orbital changes drive monsoon strength was formally tested by John Kutzbach in 1981.
Q 14Which place is the only rival to Bou Bernous's record 47 °C mean monthly maximum temperature?
Death Valley
Bou Bernous is a remote town in the Algerian desert at 378 metres above sea level.
Q 15A record sand temperature of 83.5 °C was measured in which city?
Port Sudan
Ground temperatures of 72 °C and 75 °C have been recorded in Mauritania and northern Chad.
Q 16On average, Saharan nights are how much cooler than the days?
13-20 °C
The swing is smallest on the humid coasts and largest in the dry southern interior; winter nights can dip below freezing.
Q 17Over a wide area of the eastern Sahara, the long-term mean annual rainfall is roughly how much?
0.5 mm
Meanwhile potential evaporation runs from 2,500 mm to more than 6,000 mm a year, the highest anywhere on Earth.
Q 18Sahara snow was recorded in 1979 and 2016 at the town of Ain Sefra, in which country?
Algeria
The town sits at the edge of the Saharan Atlas, high enough for winter cold to reach it.
Q 19Under the Köppen system, most of the Sahara has which climate code?
BWh
B is dry, W is desert and h is hot; the subtropical ridge is the main reason it applies over such a huge area.
Q 20The pressure ridge over the Sahara is the eastern extension of which Atlantic system?
Azores High
Its subsidence nearly reaches the ground in the coolest part of the year.
Q 24Lake Chad is the remnant of a Saharan paleolake that covered roughly how much area at its largest?
350,000 km²
Lake Mega-Chad was the biggest of four great Saharan lakes of the African humid period.
Q 25Fog from which cool ocean current waters the lichens and succulents of the Atlantic coastal desert?
Canary
That narrow strip covers about 39,900 square kilometres of southern Morocco and Mauritania.
Q 26The Tanezrouft, one of the Sahara's most arid regions with no vegetation at all, is what kind of terrain?
A flat gravel plain
It runs south from Reggane in Algeria towards the Adrar des Ifoghas in northern Mali.
Q 27The Sahara's flora comprises roughly how many species of vascular plants?
2,800
About a quarter are endemic, and about half are shared with the deserts of Arabia.
Q 28The fennec fox's most distinctive feature is what?
Its very large ears
The ears shed heat and pick up prey moving underground; it is the smallest of all foxes.
Q 29The addax, which can go nearly a year without drinking, is also known as what?
The white antelope
Its spiral horns earn it a second nickname, the screwhorn antelope; it is critically endangered.
Q 30Roughly how many mature Saharan cheetahs are thought to remain?
Fewer than 250
They are unusually pale, avoid the sun from April to October and flee any human presence.