African Kingdoms
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50 free African Kingdoms trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Long before colonial borders were drawn, Africa was a continent of kingdoms and empires. Some grew rich on desert trade, some carved churches out of living rock, some raised stone-walled capitals, and a few beat European armies in the field. This quiz travels the whole map: the trading empires of the western savanna, the forest states of the Atlantic coast, the Christian highlands of the Horn, the city-states of the Indian Ocean shore, the Nile valley and the warrior states of the south. Expect rulers, capitals, legends, art and the trade that paid for it all. It suits students revising African kingdoms for school, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone curious about a history that is too often skipped. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the questions can be printed for use on paper.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which emperor of Mali dazzled Cairo with his gold while travelling to Mecca on pilgrimage in 1324?
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo that its value across Egypt is said to have dropped noticeably. His reign is commonly regarded as the high point of Mali's power.
Q 02Which modern country, home to the ancient royal city of Meroë, contains more pyramids than Egypt?
Sudan
Sudan's Nubian pyramids are tall, narrow and steep, rising at about 70 degrees. Those at Meroë hold kings and queens buried between about 300 BC and 350 AD.
Q 03Which island sultanate off East Africa fought an 1896 war against Britain that lasted less than an hour?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar gave up after roughly 38 minutes of fighting, which makes the clash the shortest war in recorded history.
Q 04Which West African kingdom fielded the all-female regiment that inspired the 2022 film The Woman King?
Dahomey
Dahomey kept its women's regiment, known locally as the Agojie, from the 17th century until the late 19th. Europeans who met them called them Amazons.
Q 05The Kingdom of Benin, famous for its brass and bronze plaques, had its capital in which modern country?
Nigeria
Nigeria is home to Benin City, the old royal capital in Edo State. The neighbouring Republic of Benin has no historical link to the kingdom.
Q 06Which southern African country is named after a ruined medieval stone city built by ancestors of the Shona?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe borrowed the name of the ruins, which contains the Shona word for houses. The walled city served as a royal capital from the 13th century.
Q 07Which trading city of the Mali Empire became a famed centre of Islamic learning around its Sankoré mosque?
Timbuktu
Timbuktu's scholars and trade network supported an important book trade in the city's heyday. It had joined Mali early in the 14th century.
Q 08Which Zulu king reorganised his army into a formidable force and was assassinated by his half-brothers in 1828?
Shaka
Shaka is credited with the iklwa, a short stabbing spear that replaced the long throwing assegai in close combat.
Q 09Which West African rice dish takes its name from the Wolof people, founders of a medieval Senegambian empire?
Jollof
Jollof is named for the Wolof, whose Jolof Empire in modern Senegal lasted from the mid-14th century until 1549.
Q 10Ethiopia's Solomonic emperors claimed descent from King Solomon and which biblical queen?
Sheba
Sheba's queen, in the dynasty's founding story, bore Solomon a son called Menelik I. The emperors who traced their line to him ruled until 1974.
Q 11Which kingdom south of Egypt conquered its northern neighbour and ruled it as the 25th Dynasty of pharaohs?
Kush
Kush supplied the pharaohs of the Nubian Dynasty, whose reunified realm was the largest Egyptian empire since the New Kingdom. Assyrian invasions ended their rule.
Q 12Which mineral, cut from the desert at Taghaza, did Saharan caravans carry south to exchange for West African gold?
Salt
Salt was so plentiful at Taghaza that houses there were built from blocks of it. A French explorer saw their ruins in 1828.
Q 13In Ashanti legend, which royal object did the priest Okomfo Anokye call down from the sky?
A golden stool
A golden stool landed on the lap of King Osei Tutu in the legend. It is believed to house the spirit of the whole nation, so it must never touch the ground.
Q 21Sonni Ali and Askia the Great built which West African empire, ruled from its capital at Gao?
Songhai
Songhai grew into one of the largest African empires in history, then collapsed after its defeat at the Battle of Tondibi in 1591.
Q 22Which founder of the Mali Empire, nicknamed the Lion of Mali, won the Battle of Kirina around 1235?
Sundiata Keita
Sundiata Keita beat the Sosso king Soumaoro at Kirina to become Mali's first emperor. His life is the subject of a famous epic poem handed down by word of mouth.
Q 23Which West African storytellers, singers and musicians memorise histories and pass them down by word of mouth?
Griots
Griots tell memorised stories of the past instead of writing history books. The craft often runs in families, handed from one generation to the next.
Q 14Which woven strip cloth do Ashanti folk tales say weavers modelled on the patterns of Anansi the spider?
Kente
Kente, in Ashanti oral tradition, began at Bonwire, where a loom was introduced in the 17th century.
Q 15Which Ethiopian emperor, overthrown in a 1974 coup, is accorded divine importance by followers of Rastafari?
Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie became known as Ras Tafari Makonnen in 1917, years before his coronation. The religion that reveres him emerged in the 1930s.
Q 16At which 1896 battle did Emperor Menelik II's Ethiopian army rout an invading Italian force?
Adwa
Adwa forced Italy to recognise Ethiopia's sovereignty in the Treaty of Addis Ababa. No other African country of the era owed its independence to a military victory.
Q 17Which Ethiopian town is famous for churches hewn from solid rock, among them the finely carved Church of Saint George?
Lalibela
Lalibela is named after the king who, in local tradition, was instructed to build a second Jerusalem in Ethiopia. The town was once known as Roha.
Q 18Which Bantu language, rich in Arabic loanwords, grew up in the trading towns of the East African coast?
Swahili
Swahili emerged as the coast's lingua franca in the era of contact between its Bantu-speaking inhabitants and Arab traders from across the Indian Ocean.
Q 19Which island did the Merina kingdom almost wholly unite in the 1800s under rulers such as Queen Ranavalona I?
Madagascar
Madagascar's Queen Ranavalona I spent a 33-year reign resisting French and British influence. France finally conquered the kingdom in the 1890s.
Q 20Which country, known as the Gold Coast until 1957, took its name from a medieval West African trading empire?
Ghana
Ghana revived the name Arab traders gave to Wagadu, an empire whose royal title is thought to translate as ruler of gold.
Q 24Mali's Great Mosque of Djenné, first built around the 13th century, is the world's largest building of which material?
Mud brick
Mud brick walls erode in the yearly rains, so the whole town of Djenné turns out for a festival to replaster the mosque by hand.
Q 25Which city in a rainforest region near Lake Bosomtwe was the capital of Osei Tutu's Ashanti Empire?
Kumasi
Kumasi owes its name, in one tradition, to the Kum tree under which Osei Tutu negotiated for the land.
Q 26Which ancient kingdom of northern Ethiopia struck its own gold coins and raised giant stone obelisks over royal tombs?
Aksum
Aksum was listed by the prophet Mani as one of the four great powers of the 3rd-century world, alongside Persia, Rome and China.
Q 27Which biblical relic does Ethiopia's Orthodox Church claim to guard beside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion?
Ark of the Covenant
Ark of the Covenant replicas matter in everyday worship too: copies of its tablets, called tabots, are kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox church.
Q 28Which 17th-century queen of Ndongo and Matamba allied with the Dutch to fight Portuguese expansion in Angola?
Nzinga
Nzinga, in a popular story, was offered only a mat at talks with the Portuguese governor, so an attendant knelt to serve as her chair.
Q 29The Kanem–Bornu Empire, among the longest-lived in world history, grew up around which African lake?
Chad
Chad's basin sustained the empire from about 700 to 1902, fed by trade across the Sahara. Its rulers converted to Islam in the 11th century.
Q 30Which empire became the largest Yoruba-speaking state, feared by neighbouring kingdoms for the force of its cavalry?
Oyo
Oyo's horsemen had limits: an attempt to conquer the Benin Kingdom failed when the mountains of Ekiti stopped the cavalry's advance.