49 Fun Facts About Qatar

Qatar shares its only land border with which country?

Saudi Arabia: when the Saudis shut the crossing in 2017 they cut Qatar's only road link to the world, and food that used to arrive by lorry had to come by air and sea instead.

Which desert antelope, hunted to extinction in the wild by the 1970s, is Qatar's national animal?

Arabian oryx: the last wild one was reported in 1972, but zoo-bred herds have been released since 1980, and a cartoon oryx called Orry was the mascot when Qatar hosted the 2006 Asian Games.

Qatar's Mutaz Barshim chose to share Olympic gold with a rival at the Tokyo Games in which event?

High jump: tied with Italy's Gianmarco Tamberi after both failed at 2.39 m, Barshim asked an official whether there could be two golds, and the two friends shared the title rather than jump off.

Which European football club has Qatar's state-backed sports fund owned since 2011?

Paris Saint-Germain was bought by Qatar Sports Investments in 2011; the money paid for Neymar's world-record 222 million euro transfer in 2017, and the club finally won the Champions League in 2025.

Emir Ahmad bin Ali announced Qatar's independence in 1971 from his villa in which country?

Switzerland: he announced independence from a Swiss villa rather than his palace in Doha, and within six months his cousin had deposed him while he was abroad on a hunting trip.

In 1995 Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani took power in Qatar by seizing control from whom?

His father, Khalifa bin Hamad, was abroad when the bloodless palace coup took place; he contested it from exile and returned to Qatar only in 2004.

Who became Emir of Qatar in June 2013?

Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani became heir in 2003 when his elder brother Jassim renounced the title, and took the throne at 33 when Emir Hamad chose to abdicate in his favour.

The nine points of Qatar's flag are said to recall a 1916 treaty with whom?

Britain: the 1916 treaty put Qatar under British protection as the ninth 'reconciled emirate' of the Gulf, and the flag's nine points are said to mark its place in that line.

What makes the shape of Qatar's flag unique among national flags?

Over twice as wide as tall: the official ratio is 11:28, but the 2012 flag law keeps that long shape for use inside Qatar; abroad the flag is made to the host country's usual proportions.

Before oil, Qatar's economy depended on fishing and which other industry?

Pearl hunting collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s when Japanese cultured pearls flooded the market, leaving Qatar in poverty until oil exports began in 1949.

Oil was first discovered in Qatar in which field?

Dukhan, on the west coast, struck oil in the first winter of the Second World War, but the war halted work and the first exports did not leave until 1949.

As of 2024, only Russia and which other country hold larger proven natural gas reserves than Qatar?

Iran shares the prize: Qatar's North Field runs on under the Gulf as Iran's South Pars, and together they form by far the largest gas field in the world.

Of which product was Qatar the world's leading exporter for most of the 2010s?

Liquefied natural gas: Qatar chills gas from its offshore North Field into liquid at Ras Laffan so that it can travel by tanker; the first cargo sailed for Japan in 1996.

Roughly what share of Qatar's residents are Qatari citizens?

About 1 in 9: the boom that began in the 1970s built an economy that runs on foreign workers, who now far outnumber the few hundred thousand Qatari citizens.

The sponsorship system that ties migrant workers in Qatar to their employers is known as what?

Kafala, Arabic for sponsorship, tied a worker's visa to one employer, whose permission was needed even to leave the country until a 2018 law lifted that rule for most workers.

Which satellite news network, launched in 1996, gave Qatar outsized influence in the Arab world?

Al Jazeera began with 137 million dollars from the emir and a newsroom of BBC-trained journalists left jobless when the BBC's Arabic television news was cancelled that year.

Qatar's Education City hosts branches of Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and which medical school?

Weill Cornell opened after the emir's foundation pledged 750 million dollars over ten years; it grants the same Cornell MD as New York and was Qatar's first college to teach men and women together.

Which architect, 91 when it opened, designed Doha's Museum of Islamic Art?

I. M. Pei spent months travelling the Muslim world for inspiration and, worried that later buildings would hem his museum in, asked the emir to build it an island of its own.

Which ruined walled town on Qatar's northwest coast became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013?

Al Zubarah, founded by merchants from Kuwait, was destroyed in 1811 and abandoned in the early 1900s; the desert sand that buried its palaces, mosques and streets is what preserved them.

What appears alongside the crossed swords on Qatar's national emblem?

A dhow: the traditional boat rides the waves beside two palm trees, a pairing the government reads as marine life and land life meeting in harmony.

With no rivers or lakes, where does Qatar get most of its drinking water?

Desalinated seawater: the peninsula has no permanent fresh water and most of what lies underground is too full of minerals to drink, so plants along the coast turn the Gulf itself into tap water.

Heaps of crushed sea-snail shells on a Qatari island are thought to mark the earliest known production of what?

Purple dye: the shells lie with Kassite pottery of the second millennium BC on the Al Khor Islands, the remains of a works that squeezed the prized colour from sea snails.

Before Islam arrived, the region of Qatar, then called Beth Qatraye, was a literary centre of which religion?

Christianity: Beth Qatraye, 'region of the Qataris' in Syriac, had bishops of the Church of the East and produced writers such as Isaac of Nineveh, a mystic still read by Christians today.

To which power did Qatar's rulers submit in 1871, leading to the 1893 Battle of Al Wajbah?

The Ottoman Empire sent troops against Qatar's defiant sheikh in 1893; his tribesmen routed them at Al Wajbah, and Ottoman rule was nominal from then on.

Rather than independence, what does Qatar's National Day on 18 December commemorate?

A founding ruler's accession: Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed took over as ruler on 18 December 1878 and united the tribes; the holiday was moved from independence day, 3 September, only in 2007.

Which North African country joined three Gulf neighbours in cutting ties with Qatar from 2017 to 2021?

Egypt joined the boycott in June 2017; Qatar accepted none of the thirteen demands put to it, and the rift was closed by the al-Ula declaration of January 2021.

Which US military facility in Qatar serves as the forward headquarters of Central Command?

Al Udeid was built by Qatar in 1996 for more than a billion dollars; American aircraft first used the then-secret base in 2001, and in 2003 the US moved its regional air operations centre there.

Qatar hosted a political office for which group to facilitate peace talks with the US and others?

The Taliban's office in Doha hosted years of talks, and it was there on 29 February 2020 that their envoys signed the deal setting terms for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was the first held in which months, to dodge the summer heat?

November and December: the switch meant Europe's leagues had to stop in mid-season, and the final was played on 18 December, Qatar's National Day.

Who won the 2022 World Cup final at Lusail Stadium?

Argentina won 4–2 on penalties after a 3–3 draw in which Lionel Messi scored twice and France's Kylian Mbappé hit a hat-trick and still finished on the losing side.

Qatar's own team at the 2022 World Cup earned what unwanted record?

First host to lose every game: Qatar were beaten in all three group matches and were the first team eliminated, three years after winning the Asian Cup while conceding a single goal.

Qatar retained the Asian Cup at home in 2024 by beating which team in the final?

Jordan, playing their first major final, lost 3–1 as Qatar's Akram Afif scored a hat-trick made up entirely of penalties.

Qatar won the 2022 World Cup hosting vote by beating which country in the final round?

The United States lost the last round 14–8 in December 2010, but its turn came: it co-hosted the 2026 World Cup with Canada and Mexico.

Which sport saw Qatar finish runner-up to France as hosts of the 2015 men's world championship?

Handball: a host squad built largely from players naturalised in the years before the tournament lost the final 25–22 to France, winning Qatar its first world championship medal.

Qatar's currency, the riyal, is divided into 100 of what?

Dirhams: Qatar used the Gulf rupee, issued by India, until India devalued it in 1966; the riyal that replaced it has long been pegged at 3.64 to the US dollar.

Qatar's only licensed alcohol retailer, open to permit holders, is a subsidiary of which state-owned company?

Qatar Airways owns the Qatar Distribution Company; when Qatar eased its outright ban on pork, the same shops became the only place allowed to sell that too.

Qatar was the first Gulf state in recent years to reintroduce what, in 2013?

Male citizens who are called up serve one year; about 2,000 conscripts pass through annually.

Qatar's first-ever elections were held on 8 March 1999, a date marked worldwide as what?

International Women's Day: the date is said to have been chosen on purpose, because the municipal poll gave Qatari women the vote at the same moment as men.

Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, established in 2005, is called what?

Qatar Investment Authority spends the state's energy surplus abroad: it bought Harrods from Mohamed Al Fayed for 1.5 billion pounds in 2010 and owns a fifth of Heathrow Airport.

The National Museum of Qatar, opened in 2019, takes its shape from which natural formation?

A desert rose: the museum's interlocking discs copy the crystal clusters that wind, salt water and sand form in the desert, and they wrap around the restored palace of a former ruler.

Stadium 974, a 2022 World Cup venue designed to be taken apart afterwards, was built from 974 of what?

Shipping containers: the modular ground used 974 recycled ones, a number that is also Qatar's international dialling code, so that it could be dismantled when the tournament ended.

Which Roman writer gave the earliest account of the Qatar peninsula's inhabitants, calling them the Catharrei?

Pliny the Elder wrote of the Catharrei in the first century AD; a century later Ptolemy's map labelled the peninsula Catara, the old name that lives on in Doha's Katara Cultural Village.

Which Gulf state does Qatar's flag most resemble, differing mainly in colour and the number of points?

Bahrain's flag is red where Qatar's is maroon and has five white points to Qatar's nine; the five, fixed in 2002, stand for the five pillars of Islam.

Qatar, a peninsula about 160 km long, is slightly smaller in area than which US state?

Connecticut is a little larger than Qatar, which is so small that the 2022 World Cup was the most compact since 1930: no team needed a flight between matches.

Which global body's long-running 'Doha Round' of talks was launched in Qatar's capital in 2001?

The World Trade Organization opened the round at a ministerial meeting in Doha to lower trade barriers for poorer countries; the talks broke down in 2008 in a dispute over farm trade and were never completed.

In 1968 Qatar joined talks with Bahrain and seven Trucial States to form a federation that became what?

The United Arab Emirates was planned as a union of nine; Qatar and Bahrain walked away from the talks and became independent on their own in 1971, leaving the seven Trucial States to unite without them.

Which marine mammal has been recorded off Qatar in a single herd of more than 600, one of the largest ever seen?

Dugong: the shallow seagrass meadows of the Gulf feed the world's second-largest population of these shy 'sea cows', outnumbered only by Australia's.

Which Qatari body held its only election in 2021 before a 2024 referendum scrapped the vote?

The Shura Council was meant to have 30 of its 45 members chosen by voters; that happened once, in October 2021, before a 2024 referendum returned every seat to appointment by the emir.

Since Qatar banned child jockeys in 2005, what has ridden its racing camels?

Small robots took over: each carries a whip arm worked by remote control, and the operators keep pace with the race in cars driven alongside the track.