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50 free Prophet Muhammad trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The life of the Prophet Muhammad is one of the most closely recorded of any figure in the ancient world: his companions remembered the name of the woman who nursed him, the cloak he used to settle a dispute over a sacred stone, and the weekday on which he died. Every question here comes from that record, the seerah, told plainly and with respect. The 50 questions follow his life in order: a fatherless boyhood in Mecca, his marriage and trading years, the first revelation in a mountain cave, persecution and the migration to Medina, the companions who sheltered and defended him, the battles and treaties of the Medina years, the conquest of Mecca, the Farewell Sermon, and the names and titles by which the Quran and later Muslims have known him. It suits Islamic studies classes, madrasa quiz nights, Eid gatherings and anyone revising the seerah. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the classroom.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Muhammad's birth year is named for which animal, recalling Abraha's failed march on Mecca?
Elephant
The Year of the Elephant, roughly 570 CE, is named for the war elephants Abraha brought to demolish the Kaaba, an army that tradition says was routed by birds dropping stones.
Q 02In which cave above Mecca, on the 'Mountain of Light', did Muhammad receive the first revelation?
Hira
Hira is a chamber only about 3.7 m long and 1.6 m wide, 270 m up the mountainside, where Muhammad had withdrawn to meditate when the angel brought the opening verses of the Quran in 610.
Q 03Which angel, said in hadith to have six hundred wings, brought Muhammad the Quran's revelations?
Gabriel
Gabriel, Jibril in Arabic, is also believed by Muslims to have announced the births of John the Baptist and Jesus, so the same angel spans the Gospels and the Quran.
Q 04Which merchant paid Muhammad double her usual commission for a trade trip, then proposed marriage?
Khadijah
Khadijah became the first person to accept Islam, and the marriage lasted around 24 years until her death in 619.
Q 05Which year saw Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina, the event that opens the Islamic calendar?
622
622 became year one only later: the second caliph fixed the Hijra as the calendar's starting point around 638, some sixteen years after the journey itself.
Q 06In whose apartment, now under the dome of the Prophet's Mosque, did Muhammad die and lie buried?
Aisha
Aisha, daughter of the first caliph, is credited with narrating over 2,000 hadiths, and the first two caliphs were later buried beside Muhammad in her room.
Q 07Which daughter of Muhammad, mother of Hasan and Husayn, died within six months of her father in 632?
Fatimah
Fatimah is the only child of Muhammad through whom his family line has survived, which is why descendants today trace themselves to her sons.
Q 08On which weekday did Muhammad die in 632, the same day of the week tradition gives for his birth?
Monday
Monday, 8 June 632, was the day of Muhammad's death in Medina, and he is reported to have fasted on Mondays because he was born on that day.
Q 09How many daily prayers were set at Muhammad's ascension, after Moses told him fifty was too many?
5
Five prayers a day was the final number after Muhammad, on Moses' advice, went back to God nine times from the original fifty, and the five were credited with the merit of fifty.
Q 10Which city did Muhammad's followers face in prayer for sixteen months before the qibla became Mecca?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem gave way to Mecca in the second year after the Hijra, and the Medina mosque where the congregation is said to have turned mid-prayer is still called the Mosque of the Two Qiblas.
Q 11Which uncle took in Muhammad at eight and later swore to the Quraysh he would never hand him over?
Abu Talib
Abu Talib took in his orphaned nephew despite his own poverty, and his death around 619, aged over 80, stripped Muhammad of his protector in Mecca.
Q 12Which grandfather, finder of the lost Zamzam well, raised Muhammad from age six until his own death?
Abd al-Muttalib
Abd al-Muttalib, a leader of the Quraysh, found traces of the ancient well beside the Kaaba and cried 'Allahu akbar', and he took charge of the orphan when the boy's mother died on the road from Medina.
Q 13Muhammad's mother, who died at al-Abwa on the road from Medina when he was six, bore which name?
Aminah
Q 21Which command was the first word revealed to Muhammad, opening a surah named for a blood clot?
Read
Read, 'Iqra', was the command Muhammad reports the angel pressing on him three times after he answered that he could not read, and the chapter it opens is the 96th of the Quran.
Q 22In which month, on the Night of Power, do Muslims hold that Muhammad received the first revelation?
Ramadan
Ramadan is named in the Quran itself (2:185) as the month of revelation, and the Night of Power is sought on an odd-numbered night among the month's last ten.
Q 23Which Christian kingdom across the Red Sea took in Muhammad's persecuted followers around 615?
Abyssinia
Abyssinia's king, the Negus, refused to surrender the migrants to a Meccan delegation until he had heard their case, made by Ja'far, who described how Muhammad had called them from idols to one God.
Aminah bint Wahb had taken her six-year-old to visit relatives in Medina, where her husband lay buried, and she fell ill on the way home attended by her maid Umm Ayman.
Q 14Which name did Muhammad's father bear, a trader who died at Medina months before his son was born?
Abdullah
Abdullah died, by Ibn Sa'd's account, three months after his marriage, having stopped in Medina on his way home from Syria, so Muhammad was born fatherless around 570.
Q 15Which Banu Sa'd woman nursed the infant Muhammad in the desert, as Meccan families then arranged?
Halimah
Halimah kept the boy for his first years, and her family remembered that their flock gave milk through a famine while the neighbours' animals were dying.
Q 16Which clan of Muhammad, named for his great-grandfather, faced a Meccan ban on trade and marriage?
Banu Hashim
Banu Hashim's boycott ended, tradition says, when the written pact was found eaten by termites except for the words 'In your name, O God', after two to three years of hunger in the valley.
Q 17What did Meccans call the trader Muhammad, who settled the Black Stone dispute with a shared cloak?
Al-Amin
Al-Amin, 'the Trustworthy', was the reputation Muhammad earned as a merchant, and when the rebuilt Kaaba's stone had to be replaced he set it in place himself after the four major clans raised the cloak together.
Q 18Which monk, by tradition, saw a cloud shade the boy Muhammad in a caravan and foretold his mission?
Bahira
Bahira, the story goes, checked the boy against descriptions in an old book, found the 'sign of prophethood' on his back, and urged his uncle to hurry him home to Mecca.
Q 19Which Christian cousin of Muhammad's first wife called the angel the 'Namus' once sent to Moses?
Waraqah ibn Nawfal
Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Christian ascetic, died shortly afterwards, and the revelations themselves paused for a while before they resumed.
Q 20How old was Muhammad when, around 610, the first revelation came to him in a cave outside Mecca?
40
Forty was Muhammad's age when his mission began, roughly twelve years before the Hijra and twenty-two before his death in 632.
Q 24Which uncle of Muhammad is condemned in Surah al-Masad, the 111th chapter of the Quran?
Abu Lahab
Abu Lahab was Muhammad's half-uncle, and he died around 624 about a week after news of the Quraysh defeat reached Mecca, a head wound from his sister-in-law having turned septic.
Q 25Who is honoured as Islam's first martyr, an elderly woman speared by Abu Jahl for her faith?
Sumayyah
Sumayyah, an old and frail woman of around 60, was the mother of the companion Ammar ibn Yasir, whose whole family was among the earliest converts in Mecca.
Q 26Which opponent set out to kill Muhammad but converted on hearing Surah Ta-Ha at his sister's home?
Umar
Umar, later the second caliph, was moved by the verse on God's oneness (20:14) and then prayed openly at the Kaaba, a public act the Quraysh had been trying to suppress.
Q 27Which walled city of the Banu Thaqif pelted Muhammad with stones when he sought its protection?
Ta'if
Ta'if's orchards gave Muhammad refuge after the stoning, where a Christian slave named Addas brought him grapes and, hearing him say 'Bismillah', kissed his head, hands and feet.
Q 28Which steed, smaller than a mule but bigger than a donkey, carried Muhammad on the Night Journey?
Buraq
Buraq's every stride, the hadith says, reached as far as the eye could see, and a spot beside the Western Wall in the holy city is still shown as where Muhammad tethered it.
Q 29Quran 33:40 calls Muhammad 'not the father of any of your men' and gives him which title?
Seal of the Prophets
Seal of the Prophets, Khatam an-Nabiyyin, is understood by Sunni and Shia alike as meaning Muhammad closes the line of prophets that began with Adam.
Q 30What was Medina called before Muhammad came, its Aws and Khazraj tribes having feuded for 120 years?
Yathrib
Yathrib is presumed to have been renamed Madinat al-Nabi, 'City of the Prophet', and its residents had met Muhammad secretly outside Mecca to invite him as a mediator between the factions.