Sudan Trivia
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49 free Sudan trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sudan was Africa's largest country until 2011 and it still has more pyramids than Egypt. This quiz runs from the earliest known war in the world at Jebel Sahaba to the civil war that broke out in Khartoum in 2023, by way of the Kingdom of Kush and its black pharaohs, the Christian kingdoms of Nubia that fought off the Arabs, the Funj and Darfur sultanates, the Mahdi's siege of Khartoum, Kitchener at Omdurman, the Anglo-Egyptian condominium and independence on New Year's Day 1956. Easy questions ask for the capital, the river that forms there and the country to the north; the harder ones want the highest point, the meaning of the country's name, the dust storm with its own Arabic word, the year Sharia was dropped, the Sufi group behind the Umma party and the general who won the 1970 Africa Cup of Nations at home. There is also Omar al-Bashir, Darfur and the Janjaweed, the 2019 sit-in, the RSF, the flag that changed after a coup and the gold that now props up the economy. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its cities and its history, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The river that joins the White Nile at Sudan's capital is named after which colour?
Blue
The Blue Nile meets the White Nile at Khartoum, a name often said to mean 'elephant's trunk', after the spit of land between the two rivers.
Q 02Which country borders Sudan to the west, along the edge of Darfur?
Chad
Chad shares a long desert border with Darfur, and hundreds of thousands of people fled across it to refugee camps after war broke out there in 2003.
Q 03Sudan's coastline lies on which body of water?
The Red Sea
The Red Sea coast holds Port Sudan, the main harbour, built between 1905 and 1909 to replace the old coral-choked port of Suakin.
Q 04Ful medames, widely eaten in Sudan, is a stew made from which ingredient?
Fava beans
Fava beans are stewed and dressed with oil in a dish that came south from Egypt and became a standard Sudanese breakfast.
Q 05Sudan won independence a year before which West African country?
Ghana
Ghana's independence in March 1957 is usually called the first south of the Sahara, yet Sudan raised its own flag on 1 January 1956, months after an army mutiny began its first civil war.
Q 06What was the joint British-Egyptian rule of Sudan from 1899 to 1956 formally called?
A condominium
A condominium meant shared authority on paper, but in practice a British governor-general ran Sudan from Khartoum and Egypt was edged out almost completely.
Q 07The name Sudan comes from the Arabic bilad as-sudan, meaning what?
Land of the Blacks
Land of the Blacks once meant the whole belt of Africa south of the Sahara, which is why colonial Mali was called French Sudan; only later did the name narrow to one country.
Q 08The Kingdom of Kush was centred first at Napata and later at which city farther up the Nile?
Meroë
Meroë is thought to have become the capital after an Egyptian army sacked Napata around 590 BC, pushing the Kushite court to a safer seat farther south.
Q 09Kushite kings from Sudan ruled Egypt as its 25th Dynasty for about a century until which empire drove them out?
The Assyrians
The Assyrians invaded in the seventh century BC and the last Kushite pharaohs withdrew to Napata, where their line went on ruling Kush for centuries.
Q 10In the 1830s the Italian treasure-hunter Giuseppe Ferlini smashed open which ancient Sudanese monuments while hunting for treasure?
Pyramids
Pyramids were levelled from the top down in his hunt; in Queen Amanishakheto's he found a hoard of jewellery, later sold to museums in Berlin and Munich.
Q 11Jebel Sahaba in Sudan, often cited as the earliest evidence of warfare, is what kind of site?
A cemetery
A cemetery here held dozens of skeletons, some with stone points still lodged in the bones; a 2021 restudy found healed wounds too, pointing to repeated raids, not one battle.
Q 12What did Nubia's Christian kingdom of Makuria manage twice in the seventh century that few states could?
It repelled the Arab armies
It repelled the Arab armies at Dongola, where Muslim chroniclers praised the Nubian archers, and the treaty that followed kept the frontier largely at peace for 600 years.
Q 13From the 12th century, Christian Nubia's throne usually passed to which relative?
Q 21Which militant leader lived in Khartoum from 1991 until Sudan expelled him in 1996, when he returned to Afghanistan?
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden arrived after falling out with Saudi Arabia over US troops in the Gulf War, and built up his network there until international pressure forced Sudan to expel him.
Q 22The Darfur war led the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for whom?
Omar al-Bashir
Omar al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state the court had charged, in 2009, yet he held on to power for another ten years until his own army removed him.
Q 23What was the name of the horse-riding Arab militias accused of atrocities in Darfur?
Janjaweed
The son of the king's sister
The son of the king's sister inherited, so as Nubian and Arab noble families intermarried, Muslim nephews gained a claim, and a Muslim king took the throne in the 1310s.
Q 14Which Islamic sultanate, founded in 1504, dominated central Sudan from Sennar until the 19th century?
The Funj
The Funj adopted Islam as they took power, then ruled a patchwork of vassal chiefs from Sennar until an Egyptian army took the city in 1821.
Q 15Which ruler of Egypt sent his son to conquer northern Sudan in 1821?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali, nominally the Ottoman sultan's governor, wanted Sudanese slave recruits for the new army he was building; the regime he installed is remembered as the Turkiyah.
Q 16British soldiers called the Mahdi's fighters in 1880s Sudan by which name?
Dervishes
Dervishes was the name the British used, but the Mahdi had banned it: he called his followers the Ansar, after the Prophet's own early supporters.
Q 17Which British general was killed when the Mahdi's forces stormed Khartoum in January 1885?
Charles Gordon
Charles Gordon had been sent to evacuate the city but stayed to defend it through a siege of nearly a year; the relief force arrived two days after it fell.
Q 18Kitchener's reconquest of Sudan culminated in which battle on 2 September 1898?
Omdurman
Omdurman pitted machine guns against spears: more than 10,000 Mahdists died for fewer than 50 of Kitchener's men, and a young Winston Churchill rode in the cavalry charge.
Q 19According to Churchill, what did Kitchener take as a trophy from the Mahdi's tomb?
His head, in a kerosene can
His head, in a kerosene can, is Churchill's own phrase; Kitchener had ordered the tomb wrecked and the body dug up, and the desecration troubled even Queen Victoria.
Q 20During Sudan's 2019 protests, women demonstrators were nicknamed 'Kandaka', an ancient Nubian title for what?
A queen
A queen or queen mother of Kush bore the title; it stuck in 2019 after a photo of student Alaa Salah, in a white robe on a car roof, leading chants went around the world.
Janjaweed, a name often rendered 'devils on horseback' though its origin is unclear, were Arab nomad fighters the government used against Darfur's rebels from 2003.
Q 24Sudan's ruler fell in April 2019 after months of protests sparked by what?
A tripling of bread prices
A tripling of bread prices, as bread and fuel subsidies were cut, brought crowds out first in the town of Atbara, not the capital, and the marches grew into a sit-in at army headquarters.
Q 25Which economist led Sudan's 2019 transitional government as prime minister until an October 2021 coup?
Abdalla Hamdok
Abdalla Hamdok, a former UN economist, was detained in the coup, reinstated a month later under a deal with the generals, and resigned in January 2022.
Q 26The civil war that erupted in Khartoum on 15 April 2023 set the army against which paramilitary force?
The Rapid Support Forces
The Rapid Support Forces' commander, known as Hemedti, had joined the army chief in the 2021 coup before the two fell out and turned their guns on each other.
Q 27Which offence, once punishable by death in Sudan, was struck from the law in the reforms of 2020?
Apostasy
Apostasy, renouncing Islam, had carried a death sentence; the same reforms after three decades of Islamist rule ended public flogging and let non-Muslims drink alcohol.
Q 28What did Sudan's first flag look like, before the red, white and black design of 1970?
Blue, yellow and green stripes
Blue, yellow and green stripes were raised at independence on 1 January 1956 and flew until the government that came out of the 1969 coup switched to pan-Arab colours.
Q 29Lake Nubia, on Sudan's northern border, is the southern end of a reservoir held back by which dam?
The Aswan High Dam
The Aswan High Dam's reservoir drowned the old Sudanese town of Wadi Halfa in 1964, and tens of thousands of Nubians were resettled far from the river.
Q 30What is the Arabic name for the violent dust storms that can black out the sun over Sudan?
Haboob
Haboob comes from the Arabic for a strong wind; first described in Sudan, the word is now used by forecasters as far away as the American Southwest.