Islamic Art
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50 free Islamic Art trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Islamic art covers more than thirteen centuries and a stretch of the map that runs from Spain and Morocco to India and China. It takes in buildings, books, ceramics, textiles and metalwork made for sultans, shahs and emperors as well as for places of worship, and much of it turns writing and geometry into decoration. This quiz follows the subject the way an art history survey does. It asks about famous mosques, shrines, tombs and palaces and the people who built them, about the vocabulary of mosque design, about scripts, tile and pottery techniques, and about celebrated carpets, manuscripts and court painters. A few questions visit the museums where well-known pieces are kept. It is written for students revising the art of the Islamic world, for travellers who have stood under a tiled dome and wondered what they were looking at, and for anyone who enjoys art trivia. The early questions are friendly, the later ones ask more, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which white marble mausoleum in Agra did Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commission to house the tomb of his late wife?
Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal took more than 20,000 workers and artisans to build, under a board of architects led by the emperor's court architect. Shah Jahan's own tomb was later placed there too.
Q 02Which sixth-century Byzantine church in Istanbul was converted into a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453?
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia remained the principal mosque of Istanbul for more than 150 years after the conquest. Its minarets were Ottoman additions, not part of the original Byzantine design.
Q 03Which Nasrid palace-fortress above Granada takes its name from the Arabic for the reddish colour of its walls?
Alhambra
The Alhambra was begun in 1238 by the first Nasrid emir, and its walls of rammed earth gave it a name meaning the red one. Granada's last sultan surrendered it in 1492.
Q 04Which octagonal Jerusalem shrine of the 690s is the oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture?
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock was built on the orders of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik. Its gold-plated roof is a modern addition, fitted in 1959–64 and again in the 1990s.
Q 05The Kaaba in Mecca is draped each year in a new silk cloth, embroidered in gold, of which colour?
Black
Black silk embroidered with gold Qur'anic verses forms the covering, known as the kiswa. A fresh one is made and fitted every year.
Q 06Which Istanbul landmark with six minarets takes its popular name from the thousands of tiles lining its interior?
Blue Mosque
The Blue Mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I. Folklore says its six minarets came from an architect mishearing the Turkish for gold minarets.
Q 07Twelve marble statues of which animal ring the fountain of a Granada courtyard built by Nasrid sultan Muhammad V?
Lions
Lions carved from marble surround the basin, whose rim carries a poem by the court vizier Ibn Zamrak. Water channels link the fountain to smaller ones in four surrounding halls.
Q 08Which jewelled seat, made for Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, did Nader Shah carry off to Persia as a war trophy in 1739?
Peacock Throne
The Peacock Throne took seven years to complete and was named for the jewelled birds displaying their tails on its canopy. It stood in the emperor's Hall of Private Audiences.
Q 09Which town in Mali has a Great Mosque of mud brick whose walls are replastered at a yearly festival?
Djenné
Djenné's whole community joins in each year, with men climbing palm-wood scaffolding to smear fresh plaster over the walls. The building seen there dates from 1907.
Q 10Which garden flower, a favourite motif on Ottoman tiles and silks, gave its name to an Ottoman era of the early 1700s?
Tulip
The Tulip Period ran from 1718 to 1730 and was named for a craze for the flower among Ottoman court society. Tulips filled Istanbul's flower markets, silks and textiles.
Q 11Which Ottoman chief architect designed more than 300 structures, including the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne?
Mimar Sinan
Mimar Sinan was about fifty when he was appointed chief royal architect, after learning his engineering in the army. He went on to serve three sultans.
Q 12Which mosque wall niche, sometimes traced to the apse of Christian churches, shows worshippers the direction of Mecca?
Mihrab
Mihrab niches spread after one was built into the Prophet's Mosque in the early 700s, on the orders of a local governor. Other scholars trace the form to Buddhist alcove shrines.
Q 13Which honeycomb-like decoration of tiered niches most likely first developed in eleventh-century Iraq?
Muqarnas
Q 21Which Iraqi city's Great Mosque, once the largest in the world, is known for a minaret encircled by a spiral ramp?
Samarra
Samarra's mosque was commissioned in 848 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil. Its tower, the Malwiya, is a spiralling cone 52 metres high.
Q 22Which city's Umayyad Mosque, built over a cathedral, is held to be the burial place of John the Baptist's head?
Damascus
Damascus gained the mosque after the caliph al-Walid I resolved in 706 to build on the cathedral site. Its gold mosaics covered some 4,000 square metres, by some estimates the largest area in the world.
Q 23Which city holds the monumental Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, built for a Mamluk ruler between 1356 and 1363?
Cairo
Muqarnas grew out of the squinch and turns a bare structural corner into a smooth, decorative zone of transition. In Iberian architecture the same technique is called mocárabe.
Q 14Which angular script, the oldest calligraphic form of Arabic, was used for early copies of the Quran?
Kufic
Kufic takes its name from Kufa, a city in southern Iraq that was an intellectual centre of the early Islamic period. Its letters are rectilinear and set out along the horizontal.
Q 15Which ornament of rhythmic scrolling and interlacing foliage has filled Islamic art since about the ninth century?
Arabesque
Arabesque was known as moresque in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, where Renaissance designers took up the style for their own decorative art.
Q 16Which Anatolian town gave its name to Ottoman ceramics made to rival Chinese porcelain from the late fifteenth century?
Iznik
Iznik potters could not make true porcelain, so they painted a low-fired fritware body instead. A distinctive bole red joined their palette once tile production took off.
Q 17Which Spanish city's Great Mosque, famed for its two-tiered arches, had a Renaissance cathedral nave inserted into it?
Córdoba
Córdoba's mosque became a cathedral in 1236. Charles V, who let the new nave go ahead three centuries later, is reputed to have been displeased when he saw the result.
Q 18Which Iranian city's Shah Mosque, begun in 1611 under Abbas the Great, stands on the south side of Naqsh-e Jahan Square?
Isfahan
Isfahan's Shah Mosque is said to contain 18 million bricks and 475,000 tiles. The building was completed around 1630.
Q 19Which Uzbek city's Registan square, once the heart of the Timurid Empire, is framed by three grand madrasas?
Samarkand
Samarkand's square gained its first madrasa under the Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg. The other two, the Sherdar and the Tilakari, were added later under the Janid dynasty.
Q 20Which mathematician's aperiodic tilings of the 1970s appear to underlie girih patterns on a 1453 shrine in Iran?
Roger Penrose
Roger Penrose investigated his tilings in the 1970s, about five centuries after craftsmen decorated the Darb-e Imam shrine. Researchers have argued the same geometry underlies its strapwork.
Cairo's Sultan Hasan was assassinated in 1361 and his body was never found, so the mausoleum built into the complex never served its purpose.
Q 24Which Istanbul complex, the main residence of Ottoman sultans from the 1460s to 1853, became a museum in 1924?
Topkapı Palace
Topkapı Palace lost its role when the court moved to the newly completed Dolmabahçe. Its museum holds Ottoman clothing, weapons, miniatures, religious relics and illuminated manuscripts.
Q 25Which epic by the Persian poet Ferdowsi inspired some of the most sumptuous miniature paintings?
Shahnameh
The Shahnameh runs to some 50,000 rhyming couplets, more than three times the length of Homer's Iliad. Ferdowsi spent 33 years completing it.
Q 26Which Persian miniaturist headed the royal ateliers in Herat and Tabriz under the late Timurids and early Safavids?
Behzad
Behzad is said to have been orphaned young and raised by the painter Mirak Naqqash, whom he succeeded as head of the Herat ateliers in 1486.
Q 27Which Mughal emperor commissioned the vast illustrated Hamzanama about 1562 and founded Fatehpur Sikri as his capital?
Akbar
Akbar abandoned Fatehpur Sikri in 1585, just fourteen years after founding it, when he left to fight a campaign in Punjab. His manuscript tells the legendary exploits of an uncle of Muhammad.
Q 28Which Indian city holds the Qutb Minar, the tallest minaret in the world built of bricks, begun in 1199?
Delhi
Delhi's tower was started by Qutb ud-Din Aibak as a victory monument, but he finished only the first level. His son-in-law Iltutmish completed it around 1220.
Q 29Which inlay of cut, polished coloured stones, matured in Florence, did Mughal craftsmen reinterpret as parchin kari?
Pietra dura
Pietra dura was regarded by the Florentines as painting in stone. Small objects from their workshop reached the Mughal court by the early 17th century, where the form took on a native style.
Q 30Which calligraphic monogram of an Ottoman sultan was fixed to official documents and stamped on the coins of his reign?
Tughra
Tughra history at the Ottoman court begins with Orhan, the dynasty's second ruler. Each sultan's was also carved on his seal.