Arab Spring Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
60 free Arab Spring trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Arab Spring trivia quiz covers the wave of uprisings that swept the Arab world from December 2010, from a street vendor's protest in a Tunisian town to civil wars that are still not fully over. The easy questions are ones anyone who followed the news can attempt: where it started, who set himself on fire and why, which Cairo square became the symbol of the Egyptian revolution, which four rulers fell, and what the demonstrators chanted. From there it moves through the timeline country by country: Ben Ali's flight to Saudi Arabia, Mubarak's eighteen days, the Libyan no-fly zone and Gaddafi's death at Sirte, Yemen's slow handover, Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout and the beginnings of the Syrian war. The harder end is for news junkies and students of the region: who coined the term Arab Spring, the Facebook page that helped spark Egypt, the Camel Incident, the Sakharov Prize and Time's Person of the Year, Tawakkol Karman's Nobel, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, Morsi's year in office and the 2013 coup, the Arab Winter, the second wave of 2018-2019 and the fall of Assad in 2024. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Arab Spring, its national uprisings and its leading figures before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Middle East, modern history and world leaders quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of these countries saw only minor protests during the Arab Spring, rather than an uprising or civil war?
Djibouti
Djibouti saw thousands rally in February 2011 against a president who had scrapped his own term limit, but police broke up the crowds and the protests ended after mass arrests.
Q 02What was Mohamed Bouazizi's occupation?
Street vendor
Street vendor: he sold fruit and vegetables to support his mother and siblings. Early reports wrongly made him a jobless university graduate, but he never finished high school.
Q 03Which European capital named a square after Mohamed Bouazizi in February 2011, weeks after his death?
Paris
Paris: its council voted the name unanimously five weeks after Bouazizi died, and that June his mother looked on as the mayor opened the square in the south of the city.
Q 04In which Tunisian town did Bouazizi's protest take place?
Sidi Bouzid
Sidi Bouzid, a town in Tunisia's interior, saw protests begin within hours of Bouazizi's act; they spread across the country and brought down the president in under a month.
Q 05According to his family, what did the police officer confiscate that sent Bouazizi to the governor's office to complain?
His electronic scales
His electronic scales: the family said officer Faida Hamdi also slapped him. She denied it, and after months in jail she was cleared of all charges.
Q 06Which Tunisian president was forced from power on 14 January 2011 after 23 years?
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took nearly two weeks to visit Bouazizi's hospital bedside. The gesture failed to calm the streets, and within three weeks he had fled the country.
Q 07To which country did Tunisia's ousted president flee on 14 January 2011?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia refused Tunisia's request to send him back, so he never served the sentences its courts passed in his absence. He died in Jeddah in 2019.
Q 08Western media nicknamed the Tunisian revolution after which flower?
The jasmine
The jasmine label came from foreign media. Tunisians speak of a revolution of dignity, and their 2014 constitution calls it the revolution for freedom and dignity.
Q 09Which Arabic slogan became the signature chant of the Arab Spring?
The people want to bring down the regime
The people want to bring down the regime was raised first by Tunisia's revolutionaries, then taken up in Egypt, and was soon heard from Morocco to Bahrain.
Q 10Which organisation took command of the 2011 air campaign against Gaddafi's forces in Libya?
NATO
NATO took over a campaign begun by French, British and American forces. Its strikes tipped the military balance toward the rebels, who took Tripoli five months later.
Q 11Decades before Bouazizi, which Czech student set himself on fire in Prague in January 1969 as a political protest?
Jan Palach
Jan Palach, a 20-year-old student, set himself alight five months after Soviet-led armies crushed the Prague Spring reforms, and his death held the whole country's attention.
Q 12Egypt's uprising began on 25 January 2011, a date organisers chose because it was which national holiday?
Police Day
Police Day: youth groups picked the holiday that honours the police to protest against police brutality, and in Egypt the uprising is known as the 25 January Revolution.
Q 13Which Cairo square became the centre of Egypt's 2011 protests?
Tahrir
Q 21Which general led the coup that removed Egypt's elected president on 3 July 2013?
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi owed his post to the man he removed, who had promoted him to defence minister less than a year earlier. He was elected president himself in 2014.
Q 22On 14 August 2013, Egyptian security forces cleared a sit-in by the ousted president's supporters around which Cairo mosque?
Rabaa al-Adawiya
Rabaa al-Adawiya gave the sit-in its emblem: rabaa means 'fourth' in Arabic, so supporters adopted a four-finger salute. Human Rights Watch counted at least 817 killed there.
Q 23Libya's uprising began with protests in which city on 15 February 2011?
Benghazi
Tahrir Square held even when Mubarak supporters charged into it on horses and camels on 2 February. The crowds stayed put until he fell nine days later.
Q 14Which Facebook page, named for a man killed by Alexandria police, helped spark Egypt's uprising?
We Are All Khaled Said
We Are All Khaled Said drew hundreds of thousands of members and became a forum on police brutality. After Tunisia's ruler fell, its anonymous founder called for the same in Egypt.
Q 15Wael Ghonim, the activist behind the famous Facebook page, was a regional executive for which company?
Google's regional marketing head was held in secret for 11 days. Hours after his release he wept through a television interview that is often credited with reviving the protests.
Q 16What did the Mubarak regime do in the early hours of 28 January 2011?
Cut internet and mobile networks nationwide
Cut internet and mobile networks nationwide: the blackout lasted five days and failed. Protests swelled after that Friday's prayers, and by nightfall the army was on the streets.
Q 17Who announced Hosni Mubarak's resignation on 11 February 2011?
Vice President Omar Suleiman
Vice President Omar Suleiman read the statement on state television, a day after Mubarak had gone on air himself and defied the crowds by vowing to stay until September.
Q 18Mubarak became president in 1981 after which leader's assassination?
Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat was shot dead at a military parade in October 1981. Mubarak, his deputy, took over and ruled for almost 30 years, naming no deputy of his own until the uprising.
Q 19What sentence did an Egyptian court hand Mubarak on 2 June 2012?
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment, for complicity in the deaths of demonstrators, did not stand: the verdict was overturned on appeal, and after a retrial he was acquitted and freed in 2017.
Q 20Who was sworn in on 30 June 2012 as Egypt's first democratically elected president?
Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood beat a former Mubarak prime minister in a run-off. A year later the army removed him after mass protests against his rule.
Benghazi rose after police arrested Fethi Tarbel, a human rights lawyer. Crowds angered by the arrest were soon calling for Gaddafi himself to step down.
Q 24What did the UN authorise in Libya on 17 March 2011?
A no-fly zone
A no-fly zone passed 10–0 because Russia and China abstained instead of using their vetoes. Two days later, coalition warplanes and missiles began striking Gaddafi's forces.
Q 25Near which city was Muammar Gaddafi killed on 20 October 2011?
Sirte
Sirte was Gaddafi's home town and one of his last strongholds. Rebel fighters found him hiding in a drainage pipe after an air strike scattered his fleeing convoy.
Q 26By which military rank was Muammar Gaddafi known throughout his 42 years ruling Libya?
Colonel
Colonel: Gaddafi was a captain when he seized power in a bloodless coup in 1969. He promoted himself afterwards, taking the rank of his idol, Egypt's Nasser.
Q 27Which Yemeni president signed a Gulf Cooperation Council deal in Riyadh in November 2011 to hand power to his vice-president?
Ali Abdullah Saleh
Ali Abdullah Saleh had repeatedly pulled out of signing at the last minute. The deal gave him immunity from prosecution, a clause that angered many demonstrators.
Q 28How was Yemen's long-time ruler injured on 3 June 2011?
A bombing at a mosque in his compound
A bombing at a mosque in his compound left him with severe burns. He was flown abroad for treatment the next day and stayed away for over three months, then abruptly came back, still president.
Q 29What eventually happened to Yemen's ousted ruler in December 2017?
He was killed by Houthi fighters
He was killed by Houthi fighters, the rebels he had allied with to seize the capital. Days earlier he had broken with them and offered talks with the Saudi-led coalition.
Q 30Which Yemeni activist shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Arab woman to win a Nobel?
Tawakkol Karman
Tawakkol Karman was arrested in January 2011 after leading a small protest in Sanaa. Her arrest sparked far bigger ones, and within two days she was free and leading them.