60 free Syria trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Syria holds some of the oldest cities on Earth and the world's earliest alphabet, and this quiz runs the whole length of its story: Ebla and Ugarit, the Battle of Kadesh, Zenobia's rebellion at Palmyra, Paul on the road to Damascus, the Umayyad caliphs, Saladin and the Crusader castles, Tamerlane, four centuries of Ottoman rule, Sykes-Picot and the French Mandate, independence in 1946, the union with Egypt, the Ba'ath coup and 53 years of Assad rule that ended in December 2024. Easy questions ask for the capital, the neighbours, the sea and the religion of the majority; the harder ones want the meaning of the flag's three red stars, the mountain that is the highest point, the village that still speaks Aramaic, the drug that became the country's biggest export, the year of the Hama massacre and Syria's only Olympic gold medallist. There is also the Umayyad Mosque, the Aleppo souk, Aleppo soap, kibbeh and arak, Damascus steel, the Golan Heights and the Kurds of the north-east. 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the official language of Syria?
Arabic
Levantine dialects dominate in the west and Mesopotamian in the north-east. Kurdish was recognised as a national language in 2026.
Q 02Syria's coastline lies on which sea?
The Mediterranean
Latakia and Tartus are the main ports, in the Alawite heartland that was the last area loyal to the Assad regime.
Q 03Which country borders Syria to the north?
Turkey
Turkey has invaded northern Syria repeatedly since 2016 to fight Kurdish forces, and hosts millions of Syrian refugees.
Q 04The Assad family's rule over Syria ended with the fall of the capital on which date?
8 December 2024
Rebels led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham took Aleppo, Hama and Homs in under two weeks. Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, ending 53 years of family rule.
Q 05Who became Syria's transitional president in January 2025?
Ahmed al-Sharaa
Formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, he had led HTS from Idlib. He signed a five-year interim constitution in March 2025.
Q 06Hafez al-Assad took power in the bloodless coup of November 1970 known as what?
The Corrective Movement
He was defence minister and had lost the Golan in 1967. He ruled until his death in 2000, when his son Bashar was elected unopposed.
Q 07In which year did the Ba'ath Party seize power in Syria, beginning six decades of one-party rule?
1963
The coup of 8 March established martial law that formally lasted until 2011. Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar had founded the party.
Q 08From 1958 to 1961 Syria merged with which country to form the United Arab Republic?
Egypt
Nasser dominated the union and Syrian officers, including a young Hafez al-Assad, secretly plotted against it. A coup ended it in September 1961.
Q 09Which European power held the League of Nations mandate over Syria between the world wars?
France
French troops crushed Faisal's short-lived kingdom at Maysalun in 1920 and did not finally leave until April 1946.
Q 10The 1916 secret deal carving the Ottoman Middle East into British and French zones is named after which two diplomats?
Sykes and Picot
Their line originally ran almost straight from Jordan to Iran; the discovery of oil at Mosul pushed that region into the British zone that became Iraq.
Q 11The kingdom of Ugarit, near modern Latakia, is credited with what world first around the 14th century BC?
The earliest known alphabet
Its 30 cuneiform letters were pressed into clay. The city was destroyed by the Sea Peoples in the Bronze Age collapse.
Q 12The earliest recorded civilisation in Syria was the kingdom of Ebla, near which modern city?
Idlib
Founded around 3500 BC, its archive of clay tablets includes a trade treaty from about 2300 BC, one of the oldest written texts from Syria.
Q 13Which queen of Palmyra rebelled against Rome in the 3rd century and briefly ruled into Egypt and Asia Minor?
Zenobia
Q 21In which year did the Ottoman Empire conquer Syria from the Mamluks, beginning four centuries of rule?
1516
Damascus became the main staging post for the hajj to Mecca, which gave it a holy character for the pilgrims passing through.
Q 22What did the three red stars on Syria's flag originally represent?
The states of Aleppo, Damascus and Deir ez-Zor
The stripes stand for the Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. The opposition revived this 1930s 'independence flag', which the new government adopted after 2024.
Q 23What is Syria's highest point?
Mount Hermon
Emperor Aurelian defeated her in 273 and razed the city. Islamic State demolished much of what remained, including the Temple of Bel, in 2015.
Q 14Julia Domna, empress of Rome as wife of Septimius Severus, came from which Syrian city?
Emesa (Homs)
Her family were hereditary priests of the sun god El-Gabal. Her great-nephews Elagabalus and Alexander Severus both became emperor.
Q 15According to the New Testament, which apostle was converted on the road to Damascus?
Paul
Saul of Tarsus was struck blind on the way to arrest Christians. He later became a leading figure of the church at Antioch.
Q 16The Great Mosque of Damascus is traditionally held to contain the head of which biblical figure?
John the Baptist
The site was the cathedral of St John before the mosque was built in 706-715. Saladin's tomb stands beside it.
Q 17Which caliphate made Damascus its capital in the mid-7th century?
The Umayyad
Its empire stretched from Spain to India. When the Abbasids overthrew it in 750 the capital moved to Baghdad and Damascus declined.
Q 18Krak des Chevaliers, one of the best-preserved medieval castles, was held from 1142 to 1271 by which order?
The Knights Hospitaller
Its Old French name means 'fortress of the hospital'. The Mamluk sultan Baibars finally took it by forging a letter ordering surrender.
Q 19Which Kurdish-born leader, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, conquered most of Syria between 1175 and 1185?
Saladin
He is buried in Damascus beside the Umayyad Mosque. Baibars and Qalawun were the Mamluk sultans who later fought off the Mongols.
Q 20In 1400 which conqueror sacked Aleppo and Damascus and deported the artisans of Damascus to Samarkand?
Tamerlane
Hulegu's Mongols had taken both cities in 1260 before the Mamluks stopped them at Ain Jalut. Timur's massacres devastated the Assyrian Christians.
It rises 2,814 metres on the Lebanese border and overlooks the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Q 24Which basalt plateau in south-west Syria has been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967?
The Golan Heights
Israel captured two-thirds of it in under 48 hours and applied its law there in 1981; the US recognised the annexation in 2019.
Q 25Which river, Syria's most important, crosses the east of the country on its way to Iraq?
The Euphrates
The Orontes flows north through Homs and Hama, home of the great wooden norias, or water wheels.
Q 26How many governorates is Syria divided into?
14
They are subdivided into 61 districts. Damascus city is a governorate in its own right.
Q 27In the village of Maaloula, north-east of Damascus, people still speak which ancient language?
Aramaic
It was the lingua franca of the Near East for a thousand years before Arabic. Two neighbouring villages also keep the Western Neo-Aramaic dialect.
Q 28The Assad family belongs to which religious minority that came to dominate the army?
Alawite
Alawites are about a tenth of the population, concentrated on the coast. Sunnis make up roughly three-quarters.
Q 29Who make up Syria's second-largest ethnic group, about a tenth of the population, mostly in the north-east?
Kurds
Their Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces did much of the ground fighting against Islamic State with US air support.
Q 30Syria has the world's seventh-largest population of which people, mostly descended from 1915 genocide survivors?
Armenians
Deir ez-Zor in the Syrian desert was the final destination of the Ottoman death marches. Aleppo and Kesab have large Armenian communities.