Comoros
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
5correct to beat the crowd
60 free Comoros trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Comoros trivia quiz covers the whole archipelago: the three islands of Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli (and the fourth, Mayotte, that stayed French), the Karthala volcano, the coelacanth rediscovered off its coast, the ylang-ylang plantations that supply most of the world's perfume industry, and a post-independence history of more than twenty coups, mercenaries and secessions. The early questions suit anyone who has looked at a map of the Mozambique Channel; the later ones will test people who know their Fomboni Accords from their Federal Islamic Republic, and who Bahia Bakari is. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of the Comoros?
Moroni
Moroni. The French long governed the islands from Dzaoudzi, a rocky islet off another island, and Moroni grew into the country's largest town only after the capital moved.
Q 02France's 1975 law said the Comorian constitution must pass how?
Island by island
Island by island. Comorian leaders saw the rule as a way to split the archipelago, and within days their deputies declared the whole of it independent, on 6 July 1975.
Q 03A 2013 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of experts in 22 countries ranked the Comoros best for what?
Women's rights
Women's rights. Experts pointed to island custom, under which the family home usually belongs to the wife and stays hers if the marriage ends.
Q 04The Comoros is the only member of which organisation to lie entirely in the Southern Hemisphere?
Arab League
Arab League. It was admitted only in 1993, after years of lobbying, though Comorians speak Comorian at home and learn Arabic mainly in Quran school.
Q 05By the area it governs, the Comoros is Africa's third-smallest country, behind São Tomé and Príncipe and which other?
Seychelles
Seychelles, Africa's smallest country, was once French too, but France lost it in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, decades before it took its first Comorian island.
Q 06Juzur al-Qamar, a local name for the Comoros, is usually translated as what?
Islands of the Moon
Islands of the Moon is the usual reading, though the old seafarers' name Qumr is said to have first meant the islands' giant neighbour and only later the smaller group.
Q 07The Comoros sits at the northern end of which body of water?
Mozambique Channel
Mozambique Channel. Ships rounding Africa for India once called at the islands for supplies, but the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, left them far from the main trade routes.
Q 08Which island of the Comoro archipelago voted against independence and is still administered by France?
Mayotte
Mayotte. A full French department since 2011, it is France's poorest yet far richer than its neighbours, so thousands of Comorians risk the sea crossing to it in small boats.
Q 09Which active shield volcano is the highest point of the Comoros?
Mount Karthala
Mount Karthala. Thousands of villagers fled when it erupted in 2005, and the eruption replaced the water lake on its crater floor with a lake of lava.
Q 10The Comoros' largest island has porous lava and no rivers, so where have its villagers mostly got their drinking water?
Rain-filled cisterns
Rain-filled cisterns. Rain sinks straight through the young lava, so households store it in tanks, and ash from a 2005 eruption fouled the supply of more than 100,000 people.
Q 11Since independence in 1975, roughly how many coups or attempted coups has the Comoros been through?
About 20
About 20: the usual tally runs to some 20 coups and attempts since 1975, and the first of them toppled the founding president just 28 days after independence.
Q 12The Comoros has long been the world's leading producer of which perfume-industry plant?
Ylang-ylang
Ylang-ylang. French planters brought the tree to the islands, and distilling its flowers over wood fires has since helped strip the Comoros of its forest.
Q 13Which currency does the Comoros use?
Comorian franc
Comorian franc. It is not the CFA franc that many other former French colonies share, but it works the same way: France's treasury guarantees its fixed exchange rate.
Q 21What colour is the triangle on the Comorian flag?
Green
Green, a traditional colour of Islam. The triangle holds four stars, one for each main island, including the one that France governs.
Q 22With all three goalkeepers ruled out of a 2021 Africa Cup of Nations knockout tie, whom did the Comoros put in goal?
A left-back
A left-back: Chaker Alhadhur pulled on the gloves after injury and Covid rules sidelined every keeper, and the tournament debutants lost only 2-1 to hosts Cameroon.
Q 23Grande Comore, the largest of the Comoro Islands, is known to Comorians themselves by which name?
Ngazidja
Ngazidja. It is the youngest island, built by a volcano that has erupted more than a dozen times in two centuries, which is why its soil is thin and its coast has few harbours.
Q 14Which 'living fossil' fish was caught off the Comoros in December 1952?
Coelacanth
Coelacanth. Scientists had searched for a second specimen for over a decade, offering rewards, only to learn that Comorian fishermen had long known the fish.
Q 15The Comoros grows bananas and coconuts in plenty but relies heavily on imports of which staple food?
Rice
Rice. Export crops planted in colonial times took over much of the islands, so too little food is grown at home and much of the staple grain arrives by ship.
Q 16At the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, the Comoros pulled off a shock 3-2 group win over which nation?
Ghana
Ghana, one of Africa's most successful football nations, lost 3-2 to the Comoros in January 2022 after Ahmed Mogni scored twice, and went out in the group stage.
Q 17Ahmed Abdallah, the Comoros' first president, met what fate in office in 1989?
Assassination
Assassination. Abdallah was shot in murky circumstances in November 1989, and days later the mercenary-led guard that was meant to protect him seized power.
Q 18Which French mercenary joined four coup attempts in the Comoros between 1975 and 1995?
Bob Denard
Bob Denard stayed on through the 1980s to run the presidential guard, converting to Islam and taking a Muslim name, and surrendered to French troops after a last coup in 1995.
Q 19Comorian president Ali Soilih, in power from 1976 to 1978, modelled his youth militia, the Moissy, on which movement?
China's Red Guards
China's Red Guards. The Moissy set out to sweep away old customs but turned on anyone who crossed them, and their excesses had cost Soilih his support by the time mercenaries overthrew him in 1978.
Q 20The constitution Comorians approved by referendum in December 2001 gave their country which new name?
Union of the Comoros
Union of the Comoros. The name sealed a deal to end two islands' breakaway: each island won a large measure of self-rule and a turn at supplying the national president.
Q 24By what name was the island of Anjouan known to English speakers until the early twentieth century?
Johanna
Johanna. Under that name the island was shelled in 1851 by the American warship USS Dale, sent after its ruler seized an American captain and his ship.
Q 25On the Comoros' largest island, a man traditionally wins a voice in village affairs only after hosting what?
A lavish wedding
A lavish wedding. The grand mariage can swallow a lifetime's savings, and when a revolutionary president tried to ban it in the 1970s the custom outlasted him.
Q 26Comorian, the islands' main language, is most closely related to which language?
Swahili
Swahili. Comorian was long written off as a mere dialect of it, but the two are separate Bantu languages, and a Swahili speaker from the mainland cannot easily follow Comorian.
Q 27Twarab, long a leading style of Comorian music, was brought to the islands in the early 1900s from where?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar. The style had itself grown up there on the model of Egyptian orchestras, and Comorian bands took up its violin and oud as their own.
Q 28Livingstone's flying fox, found only on two of the Comoro Islands, is what kind of animal?
A fruit bat
A fruit bat. With a wingspan well over a metre it is often abroad by day and, unlike most bats, can soar on rising air.
Q 29Who was the sole survivor of the 2009 Yemenia Flight 626 crash off the Comoros?
A twelve-year-old girl
A twelve-year-old girl. Bahia Bakari clung to floating debris for hours in heavy seas, and when she could not catch a thrown life jacket a sailor jumped in to pull her out.
Q 30Yemenia Flight 626, which crashed on approach to the Comoros in 2009, had departed from which city?
Sanaa
Sanaa. Most passengers had flown there from France on another aircraft and changed planes for the last leg, which ended in the sea after an aborted night landing in strong winds.