The Moors
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50 free The Moors trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For almost eight centuries, Muslim rulers held land in what is now Spain and Portugal. Europeans called them the Moors, a loose label that covered Arabs, North Africans and their descendants alike. They crossed from Africa in 711, raised some of the most admired buildings in Europe, and left their mark on the food, language and place names of the peninsula long after their last kingdom fell in 1492. This quiz follows that story from start to finish. There are questions on the generals and battles of the conquest, the golden age of Córdoba and its scholars, the palaces of Granada, and the long Christian fightback that ended Muslim rule. Others look further afield: the Moors of Sicily, the Moor in Shakespeare and on European flags, and the places in Asia, Africa and America where the name is still used. It suits history fans, students of medieval Spain and Islamic history, and travellers heading for the south of Spain. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rocky headland at the mouth of the Mediterranean is named after the Moorish general Tariq ibn Ziyad?
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a worn-down form of Jabal Tariq, Arabic for 'mountain of Tariq'. He landed at its foot in 711 to begin the Muslim conquest of Spain.
Q 02Which Shakespeare tragedy about a general's jealousy over his wife Desdemona is subtitled 'The Moor of Venice'?
Othello
Othello was written around 1603. Its hero is a Moorish commander serving the Venetian republic, and his own ensign Iago tricks him into doubting his wife.
Q 03Which hilltop palace-fortress of Granada's Moorish sultans is named for the reddish colour of its rammed-earth walls?
The Alhambra
The Alhambra means 'the red one' in Arabic, short for 'the red fortress'. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984.
Q 04Which explorer waited in the royal camp as the Moors surrendered Granada, then won backing for a voyage west?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Granada fell in January 1492. With the long war won, Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to sponsor his journey.
Q 05Which 11th-century Spanish knight fought for both Christian kings and Moorish Zaragoza before capturing Valencia?
El Cid
El Cid comes from the Arabic as-Sayyid, 'the Lord', an honour paid to Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. He ruled Valencia from 1094 until his death in 1099.
Q 06Which Mediterranean island's flag shows a single black Moor's head, wearing a white bandana, on a plain white field?
Corsica
Corsica adopted the flag under Pasquale Paoli in 1755. He had the bandana moved from over the eyes to the brow, as a sign of the island's liberation from Genoa.
Q 07A famous fountain in the Moorish sultans' palace at Granada is ringed by twelve marble statues of which animal?
Lions
Lions, twelve in all, ring a marble basin whose rim is carved with a twelve-verse poem by the vizier Ibn Zamrak.
Q 08The Spanish word ojalá, meaning 'I hope', is a Moorish-era borrowing of an Arabic phrase with what meaning?
If God wills
If God wills, law sha'a Allah in Arabic, was worn down into a single Spanish word. Spanish also kept the idea in translation, in the phrase si Dios quiere.
Q 09Which English folk tradition, performed with sticks or handkerchiefs, has a name apparently derived from 'Moorish'?
Morris dancing
Morris dancing was first recorded in the mid-15th century as 'Morisk dance'. Why it was called Moorish is unclear; the label may only have meant exotic costumes.
Q 10In which Asian country did Spanish colonisers call the local Muslims 'Moros', after the Moors they knew from home?
The Philippines
The Philippines has a Muslim minority centred on Mindanao that has since claimed the label. Many now call themselves the Bangsamoro, the 'Moro nation'.
Q 11Which Frankish mayor of the palace defeated a Moorish army from Spain at the Battle of Tours in 732?
Charles Martel
Charles Martel, whose byname means 'the Hammer', beat an army whose commander, the governor Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, died in the fighting. The invaders withdrew south over the Pyrenees.
Q 12What Spanish name is given to the centuries of Christian campaigns that drove the Moors from Iberia, ending in 1492?
The Reconquista
The Reconquista is traditionally dated from the Battle of Covadonga, around 722. The label is far younger than the wars: it first appeared in this sense in the 19th century.
Q 13Which last Moorish sultan of Granada is said to have sighed as he looked back on the city he had surrendered?
Boabdil
Q 21Tariq ibn Ziyad's Moorish army of 711 was made up mostly of recent converts from which North African people?
Berbers
Berbers formed the bulk of the invasion force, and many modern scholars hold that Tariq himself was one, a client of the Arab governor Musa ibn Nusayr.
Q 22Which Germanic people, who had sacked Rome in 410, ruled Spain until the Moors destroyed their kingdom in 711?
The Visigoths
The Visigoths lost their king and many of their leading men in one battle beside the Guadalete, which opened the road to their capital.
Q 23Which Córdoba-born philosopher did medieval Christian scholars call simply 'the Commentator' for his work on Aristotle?
Averroes
Boabdil is the European form of his Arabic name, Abu Abdallah. The spot where the story is set is still known as the Suspiro del Moro, the Moor's sigh.
Q 14By what Arabic name did the Moors know the parts of Spain and Portugal that they ruled from 711 to 1492?
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus at its height covered nearly all of Spain and Portugal and reached into southern France. By the end it had shrunk to a single emirate in the far south.
Q 15Which arch shape, narrower at its foot than its middle, marks Moorish buildings such as Córdoba's Great Mosque?
Horseshoe
Horseshoe arches carry a second tier of round arches in the mosque's prayer hall, striped in red brick and white stone. The shape is also called the keyhole arch.
Q 16The Giralda, a minaret built by the Moors and later topped with a belfry, towers over which Spanish city?
Seville
Seville's great tower has ramps instead of stairs, 35 of them, built wide enough for beasts of burden to climb.
Q 17Which product did Moorish Xàtiva pioneer in Western Europe, using a technology that the Arabs brought to the town?
Paper
Paper-making was firmly established at Xàtiva by 1150. A later Christian king, Peter III, decreed a royal water-powered mill for the town.
Q 18Which crop, later planted across the Caribbean, did the Moors introduce to Spain along with rice, cotton and oranges?
Sugar cane
Sugar cane arrived in Spain alongside lemons, apricots, spinach and saffron. The irrigated farms around Moorish cities were by far the most advanced in Europe.
Q 19Which Frankish king's invasion of Moorish Spain in 778 ended in the Pyrenees ambush retold in the Song of Roland?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne's rear guard was in fact ambushed by Basques, in revenge for the wrecked walls of Pamplona. The poem, written three centuries later, turned the attackers into Muslims.
Q 20Which pope, a former Archbishop of Munich and Freising, carried a crowned Moor's head on his papal coat of arms?
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI took the Moor's head from the ancient emblem of the Diocese of Freising. How it first came to be there is not entirely known.
Averroes is the Latin form of Ibn Rushd. Besides writing more than 100 books, he served as a judge in his home city and as a court physician.
Q 24Which Jewish philosopher, whose family left Moorish Córdoba rather than convert, became physician to Saladin?
Maimonides
Maimonides was a boy when the Almohads took Córdoba in 1148 and his family went into exile. He settled in Egypt, and his Guide for the Perplexed went on to influence Christian scholastic philosophers.
Q 25Al-Zahrawi, the Moorish physician known in Latin as Abulcasis, kept which subject for the last of his thirty volumes?
Surgery
Surgery came last because he held it to be the highest form of medicine, to be practised only after mastering the rest. He pioneered catgut for internal stitches.
Q 26Ziryab, the star musician of Moorish Córdoba's court, is said to have added a fifth pair of strings to which instrument?
The oud
The oud also got a new pick from him, an eagle's beak or quill in place of wood. He insisted that meals come in three courses too: soup, a main dish, then dessert.
Q 27Which American author moved into Granada's Moorish palace and published its legends in 1832?
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was let into the palace because of his fame. A 17-year-old guide named Mateo Ximenes helped him gather the old stories.
Q 28Which Indian-born novelist titled a 1995 novel 'The Moor's Last Sigh' after a legend of Granada's fall?
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie set the novel in Bombay and Cochin, far from Spain. Its narrator, Moraes Zogoiby, is called 'Moor' throughout the book.
Q 29Which apostle is called 'Matamoros' after the legend that he rode a white horse against the Moors at Clavijo?
Saint James
Saint James is Santiago in Spanish, and Matamoros means 'the Moor-slayer'. The battle is as legendary as the apparition, though it borrows from a real fight at Monte Laturce in 859.
Q 30Which city did the Moors capture in 831 after a year-long siege and make the capital of Muslim Sicily?
Palermo
Palermo was renamed al-Madinah, simply 'the City', and became the base for conquering the rest of the island.