Qatar Trivia
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49 free Qatar trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Forty-five questions on Qatar, the thumb of desert jutting into the Persian Gulf that went from pearl-diving backwater to the world's biggest LNG exporter in two generations. Geography and economy cover Doha, the 103-metre 'high point', the North Field, Hamad International Airport, Qatar Airways and a population that is over 90 percent foreign workers. History runs from the Kassite purple-dye works and Beth Qatraye, through the Al Khalifa at Zubarah, the 1868 British treaty that made Qatar separate from Bahrain, the Ottoman garrison and the Battle of Al Wajbah, the 1916 protectorate, oil at Dukhan, 1971 independence announced from a Swiss villa, and the father-son coups of the Al Thani. The modern rounds cover Al Jazeera, Education City, I. M. Pei's Museum of Islamic Art, the 2017 blockade, the Taliban office, the 2022 World Cup and the flag that is wider than any other. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its rulers, institutions and events, and the sentence that establishes it is quoted under each explanation. Suits a pub quiz, a Middle East classroom or a stopover in Doha.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Qatar shares its only land border with which country?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia: when the Saudis shut the crossing in 2017 they cut Qatar's only road link to the world, and food that used to arrive by lorry had to come by air and sea instead.
Q 02Which desert antelope, hunted to extinction in the wild by the 1970s, is Qatar's national animal?
Arabian oryx
Arabian oryx: the last wild one was reported in 1972, but zoo-bred herds have been released since 1980, and a cartoon oryx called Orry was the mascot when Qatar hosted the 2006 Asian Games.
Q 03Qatar's Mutaz Barshim chose to share Olympic gold with a rival at the Tokyo Games in which event?
High jump
High jump: tied with Italy's Gianmarco Tamberi after both failed at 2.39 m, Barshim asked an official whether there could be two golds, and the two friends shared the title rather than jump off.
Q 04Which European football club has Qatar's state-backed sports fund owned since 2011?
Paris Saint-Germain
Paris Saint-Germain was bought by Qatar Sports Investments in 2011; the money paid for Neymar's world-record 222 million euro transfer in 2017, and the club finally won the Champions League in 2025.
Q 05Emir Ahmad bin Ali announced Qatar's independence in 1971 from his villa in which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland: he announced independence from a Swiss villa rather than his palace in Doha, and within six months his cousin had deposed him while he was abroad on a hunting trip.
Q 06In 1995 Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani took power in Qatar by seizing control from whom?
His father
His father, Khalifa bin Hamad, was abroad when the bloodless palace coup took place; he contested it from exile and returned to Qatar only in 2004.
Q 07Who became Emir of Qatar in June 2013?
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani became heir in 2003 when his elder brother Jassim renounced the title, and took the throne at 33 when Emir Hamad chose to abdicate in his favour.
Q 08The nine points of Qatar's flag are said to recall a 1916 treaty with whom?
Britain
Britain: the 1916 treaty put Qatar under British protection as the ninth 'reconciled emirate' of the Gulf, and the flag's nine points are said to mark its place in that line.
Q 09What makes the shape of Qatar's flag unique among national flags?
Over twice as wide as tall
Over twice as wide as tall: the official ratio is 11:28, but the 2012 flag law keeps that long shape for use inside Qatar; abroad the flag is made to the host country's usual proportions.
Q 10Before oil, Qatar's economy depended on fishing and which other industry?
Pearl hunting
Pearl hunting collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s when Japanese cultured pearls flooded the market, leaving Qatar in poverty until oil exports began in 1949.
Q 11Oil was first discovered in Qatar in which field?
Dukhan
Dukhan, on the west coast, struck oil in the first winter of the Second World War, but the war halted work and the first exports did not leave until 1949.
Q 12As of 2024, only Russia and which other country hold larger proven natural gas reserves than Qatar?
Iran
Iran shares the prize: Qatar's North Field runs on under the Gulf as Iran's South Pars, and together they form by far the largest gas field in the world.
Q 13Of which product was Qatar the world's leading exporter for most of the 2010s?
Liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas: Qatar chills gas from its offshore North Field into liquid at Ras Laffan so that it can travel by tanker; the first cargo sailed for Japan in 1996.
Q 21With no rivers or lakes, where does Qatar get most of its drinking water?
Desalinated seawater
Desalinated seawater: the peninsula has no permanent fresh water and most of what lies underground is too full of minerals to drink, so plants along the coast turn the Gulf itself into tap water.
Q 22Heaps of crushed sea-snail shells on a Qatari island are thought to mark the earliest known production of what?
Purple dye
Purple dye: the shells lie with Kassite pottery of the second millennium BC on the Al Khor Islands, the remains of a works that squeezed the prized colour from sea snails.
Q 23Before Islam arrived, the region of Qatar, then called Beth Qatraye, was a literary centre of which religion?
Christianity
Q 14Roughly what share of Qatar's residents are Qatari citizens?
1 in 9
About 1 in 9: the boom that began in the 1970s built an economy that runs on foreign workers, who now far outnumber the few hundred thousand Qatari citizens.
Q 15The sponsorship system that ties migrant workers in Qatar to their employers is known as what?
Kafala
Kafala, Arabic for sponsorship, tied a worker's visa to one employer, whose permission was needed even to leave the country until a 2018 law lifted that rule for most workers.
Q 16Which satellite news network, launched in 1996, gave Qatar outsized influence in the Arab world?
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera began with 137 million dollars from the emir and a newsroom of BBC-trained journalists left jobless when the BBC's Arabic television news was cancelled that year.
Q 17Qatar's Education City hosts branches of Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon and which medical school?
Weill Cornell
Weill Cornell opened after the emir's foundation pledged 750 million dollars over ten years; it grants the same Cornell MD as New York and was Qatar's first college to teach men and women together.
Q 18Which architect, 91 when it opened, designed Doha's Museum of Islamic Art?
I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei spent months travelling the Muslim world for inspiration and, worried that later buildings would hem his museum in, asked the emir to build it an island of its own.
Q 19Which ruined walled town on Qatar's northwest coast became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013?
Al Zubarah
Al Zubarah, founded by merchants from Kuwait, was destroyed in 1811 and abandoned in the early 1900s; the desert sand that buried its palaces, mosques and streets is what preserved them.
Q 20What appears alongside the crossed swords on Qatar's national emblem?
A dhow
A dhow: the traditional boat rides the waves beside two palm trees, a pairing the government reads as marine life and land life meeting in harmony.
Christianity: Beth Qatraye, 'region of the Qataris' in Syriac, had bishops of the Church of the East and produced writers such as Isaac of Nineveh, a mystic still read by Christians today.
Q 24To which power did Qatar's rulers submit in 1871, leading to the 1893 Battle of Al Wajbah?
The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire sent troops against Qatar's defiant sheikh in 1893; his tribesmen routed them at Al Wajbah, and Ottoman rule was nominal from then on.
Q 25Rather than independence, what does Qatar's National Day on 18 December commemorate?
A founding ruler's accession
A founding ruler's accession: Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed took over as ruler on 18 December 1878 and united the tribes; the holiday was moved from independence day, 3 September, only in 2007.
Q 26Which North African country joined three Gulf neighbours in cutting ties with Qatar from 2017 to 2021?
Egypt
Egypt joined the boycott in June 2017; Qatar accepted none of the thirteen demands put to it, and the rift was closed by the al-Ula declaration of January 2021.
Q 27Which US military facility in Qatar serves as the forward headquarters of Central Command?
Al Udeid
Al Udeid was built by Qatar in 1996 for more than a billion dollars; American aircraft first used the then-secret base in 2001, and in 2003 the US moved its regional air operations centre there.
Q 28Qatar hosted a political office for which group to facilitate peace talks with the US and others?
The Taliban
The Taliban's office in Doha hosted years of talks, and it was there on 29 February 2020 that their envoys signed the deal setting terms for the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Q 29The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was the first held in which months, to dodge the summer heat?
November and December
November and December: the switch meant Europe's leagues had to stop in mid-season, and the final was played on 18 December, Qatar's National Day.
Q 30Who won the 2022 World Cup final at Lusail Stadium?
Argentina
Argentina won 4–2 on penalties after a 3–3 draw in which Lionel Messi scored twice and France's Kylian Mbappé hit a hat-trick and still finished on the losing side.