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?
Mauritania
Djibouti, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Western Sahara were the other places with only minor protests.
Q 02What was Mohamed Bouazizi's occupation?
Street vendor
He was known locally as Babousa and had supported his family since his father died when he was three.
Q 03On what date did Bouazizi set himself on fire?
17 December 2010
He died of his burns on 4 January 2011, ten days before the president fled.
Q 04In which Tunisian town did Bouazizi's protest take place?
Sidi Bouzid
It is the capital of a governorate in the centre of the country.
Q 05According to his family, what did the police officer confiscate that sent Bouazizi to the governor's office to complain?
His electronic scales
The family said officer Faida Hamdi slapped him and toppled his cart; the details remain disputed.
Q 06Which Tunisian president was forced from power on 14 January 2011 after 23 years?
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
He had visited Bouazizi in hospital and promised to send him to France for treatment.
Q 07To which country did Ben Ali flee?
Saudi Arabia
He officially resigned only after leaving the country, ending a 28-day campaign of civil resistance.
Q 08Western media nicknamed the Tunisian revolution after which flower?
The jasmine
The name follows the fashion for colour revolutions; Tunisians themselves called it the Revolution of Dignity.
Q 09What was the most famous slogan of the Arab Spring, chanted in Arabic across the region?
The people want to bring down the regime
In Arabic it runs ash-sha'b yurid isqat an-nizam.
Q 10Which political scientist said he may have unintentionally coined the term Arab Spring in a January 2011 article for Foreign Policy?
Marc Lynch
Protesters themselves preferred words like intifada, sahwa (awakening) and thawra (revolution).
Q 11The Arab Spring label echoes the Prague Spring of 1968, in which a Czech student set himself on fire as Bouazizi did. Who was he?
Jan Palach
Critics say the Spring metaphor projects Western expectations onto the Arab uprisings.
Q 12The Egyptian revolution is known in Egypt by the January date it began. Which day?
The 25th
It is also called the Revolution of Freedom, the Revolution of Rage and, less often, the Lotus Revolution.
Q 13Which Cairo square became the centre of Egypt's 2011 protests?
Tahrir
On 2 February pro-Mubarak men rode camels and horses into the crowd in what became known as the Camel Incident.
Q 21Which general led the coup that removed Morsi on 3 July 2013?
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
He suspended the 2012 constitution and later became president himself.
Q 22On 14 August 2013 Egyptian security forces raided a pro-Morsi protest camp at which Cairo mosque?
Rabaa al-Adawiya
A second, smaller camp at al-Nahda Square was cleared the same day.
Q 23Libya's uprising began with protests in which city on 15 February 2011?
Benghazi
The February 17 Brigade, an Islamist group, later took its name from those days.
Q 14Which Facebook page, named for a young man beaten to death by police in Alexandria, helped spark Egypt's uprising?
We Are All Khaled Said
More than three million people joined the page, run by Wael Ghonim and AbdelRahman Mansour.
Q 15Wael Ghonim, the activist behind the famous Facebook page, was a regional executive for which company?
He was detained for eleven days during the revolution, and Google appealed to the public to help find him.
Q 16What did the Mubarak regime do in the early hours of 28 January 2011?
Cut internet and mobile networks nationwide
Nine in ten Egyptians and Tunisians polled said they used Facebook to organise protests.
Q 17Who announced Hosni Mubarak's resignation on 11 February 2011?
Vice President Omar Suleiman
Power passed to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
Q 18For how many years had Mubarak been president when he resigned?
30
He took office in 1981 after Anwar Sadat's assassination and survived six attempts on his life.
Q 19What sentence did an Egyptian court hand Mubarak on 2 June 2012?
Life imprisonment
He died in February 2020 at the age of 91.
Q 20Who was sworn in on 30 June 2012 as Egypt's first democratically elected president?
Mohamed Morsi
He came from the Muslim Brotherhood and had first been elected to parliament in 2000.
Q 24Which numbered UN Security Council measure created a no-fly zone over Libya on 17 March 2011?
1973
A multi-state coalition began enforcing it days later, and also flew strike missions against Libyan army targets.
Q 25Near which city was Muammar Gaddafi killed on 20 October 2011?
Sirte
He had fled there in a small convoy on the day Tripoli fell.
Q 26In which year had Gaddafi taken power in Libya through a bloodless coup?
1969
He set out his Third International Theory in The Green Book.
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
He gained immunity from prosecution and left office by February 2012.
Q 28How was Yemen's long-time ruler injured on 3 June 2011?
A bombing at a mosque in his compound
At least five people were killed in the blast; he later returned for his successor's inauguration.
Q 29What eventually happened to Yemen's ousted ruler in December 2017?
He was shot by a Houthi sniper
His former Houthi allies accused him of treason during a battle in the capital.
Q 30Which Yemeni activist shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Arab woman to win a Nobel?
Tawakkol Karman
She was also the first Yemeni and only the second Muslim woman to win any Nobel Prize.