Tajikistan Trivia
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50 free Tajikistan trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tajikistan is the mountain republic of Central Asia, more than 90% highland and the only one of the five 'stans' with a Persian-speaking majority. This quiz climbs through its history: Sogdiana and the Silk Road, Alexander and the Greco-Bactrians, the Samanid emirs who revived Persian culture, Tamerlane, the Emirate of Bukhara, the Russian conquest, the Soviet republic carved out in 1929 with a capital in a village named after a Monday market, independence in 1991 and the civil war that followed. Easy questions ask for the capital, the neighbours, the mountains and the religion; the harder ones want the peak once called Stalin Peak, the meaning of 'Dushanbe', the currency named after a medieval emir, the dam that was the tallest in the world, the language that is the last descendant of Sogdian and the president who has ruled since 1994. There is also oshi palav, qurutob, buzkashi, Nowruz, hammer-throw gold medals, a shock run to the Asian Cup quarter-finals and one of the tallest flagpoles on Earth. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its capital and its history, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan?
Dushanbe
Dushanbe, in the west of the country, was a small market village when it became the Tajik capital in 1924; it bore the name Stalinabad until 1961.
Q 02The name of Tajikistan's capital means what in Persian?
Monday
The capital's name is the Persian word for Monday: du (two) plus shanbe (Saturday), the second day after Saturday, because the village's weekly bazaar was held on Mondays.
Q 03Roughly what share of Tajikistan is covered by mountains?
More than 90%
More than 90% of Tajikistan is mountainous (about 93%), with roughly half the country above 3,000 metres; its glaciers feed the Amu Darya and ultimately the Aral Sea.
Q 04Which country lies along Tajikistan's southern border, marked by the Amu Darya and Panj rivers?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan lies across the Panj and Amu Darya rivers along Tajikistan's entire southern border, a frontier that Moscow's border troops patrolled until they handed it over in 2005.
Q 05In which year did Tajikistan declare independence from the Soviet Union?
1991
Tajikistan declared independence on 9 September 1991 as the Soviet Union broke up; within months it slid into a civil war that lasted until the 1997 peace accord.
Q 06Who won Tajikistan's November 1994 presidential election?
Emomali Rahmon
Emomali Rahmon, who had led the country since late 1992 as chairman of the Supreme Soviet, won the November 1994 vote and received the title 'Leader of the Nation', with lifelong immunity, in 2015.
Q 07Which alphabet replaced the Latin script for writing Tajik in 1940?
Cyrillic
Cyrillic replaced the Latin alphabet for Tajik by Soviet decree, a dozen years after planners had moved the language off the Perso-Arabic script, cutting Tajiks off from the wider Persian-speaking world.
Q 08Under the constitution, which language is Tajikistan's official 'language of inter-ethnic communication'?
Russian
Russian is named in the 1994 constitution as the language of inter-ethnic communication, alongside Tajik as the state language; ethnic Russians fell from 7.6% of the population in 1989 to about 0.5% by 2010.
Q 09What is Tajikistan's currency, introduced in 2000 to replace the Tajik rouble?
Somoni
The Somoni, introduced in October 2000 to replace the Tajik rouble, is divided into 100 dirams and is named after the medieval ruler Ismoil Somoni.
Q 10Tajikistan's highest mountain, at 7,495 metres, was known by what name from 1962 to 1998?
Communism Peak
Communism Peak was the name from 1962 to 1998 of the 7,495-metre summit, the highest point in the Soviet Union; it had been Stalin Peak from 1933 and was renamed again in 1998.
Q 11Which 9th-10th century Transoxiana dynasty revived Persian culture and is claimed as the first Tajik state?
The Samanids
The Samanids ruled Transoxiana and Khorasan in the 9th and 10th centuries and made New Persian a language of court and literature; their ruler Ismail Samani, in power from 892, is honoured with a giant statue in the capital.
Q 12Which 10th-century poet, the first great voice of New Persian, is a Tajik national icon?
Rudaki
Rudaki (c. 858-941) is regarded as the father of New Persian poetry; only fragments of his verse survive, and the capital's main avenue and a central park bear his name.
Q 13Northern Tajikistan, including Khujand and Panjakent, belonged to which ancient Silk Road civilisation?
Sogdiana
Q 21Tajikistan's economy is among the most dependent in the world on which source of income?
Remittances from migrant workers
Remittances from migrant workers, most of them working abroad, have been worth between a quarter and a half of Tajikistan's GDP every year since the late 2000s, one of the highest shares in the world.
Q 22Which metal, smelted by state-owned TadAZ, is one of Tajikistan's main sources of income?
Aluminium
Aluminium from the giant Tursunzoda smelter, run on cheap hydroelectricity from imported alumina since the country mines no bauxite, has long been Tajikistan's largest industrial export.
Q 23Which kind of dish is Tajikistan's UNESCO-listed national dish, known locally as osh?
Sogdiana, centred on the Zeravshan valley, was home to the merchants who dominated Silk Road trade between China and Persia from the 4th to the 8th centuries; Panjakent's ruins preserve their murals.
Q 14Khujand, Tajikistan's second city, stands on the site of which city founded by Alexander the Great?
Alexandria Eschate
Alexandria Eschate, 'Alexandria the Furthest', was founded by Alexander the Great in 329 BC on the Syr Darya at the northeastern edge of his empire; modern Khujand occupies the site.
Q 15Which historic Tajik cities were left in Uzbekistan when the Soviets drew Tajikistan in 1924?
Bukhara and Samarkand
Bukhara and Samarkand, the great Persian-speaking cities of Transoxiana, went to the Uzbek SSR when the Tajik autonomous republic was drawn in 1924, a grievance Tajiks have nursed ever since.
Q 16Tajikistan went from an autonomous republic within Uzbekistan to a full Soviet republic in what year?
1929
In 1929 the Tajik ASSR was separated from the Uzbek SSR and made a full union republic; the Khujand district was transferred to it the same year, giving it a slice of the Fergana Valley.
Q 17Roughly what share of ministerial posts did the 1997 ceasefire ending the 1992-97 civil war reserve for the opposition?
30%
The June 1997 General Agreement reserved 30% of government posts for the United Tajik Opposition; the UN-brokered deal is counted among its successes, though the Islamist opposition was later squeezed out of politics.
Q 18Tajikistan's flag has red, white and green stripes with what emblem in the centre?
A crown under seven stars
A crown under seven stars sits on the white central stripe of the flag adopted in November 1992, which kept the red, white and green of the Soviet-era Tajik flag; seven stands for perfection in Persian tradition.
Q 19The 165-metre flagpole outside the capital's Palace of Nations held what record from 2011 to 2014?
World's tallest
World's tallest flagpole was the record the 165-metre pole in the capital held from 2011 until the 171-metre Jeddah Flagpole beat it by six metres in 2014; its flag measures 30 by 60 metres.
Q 20The Nurek Dam on the Vakhsh River held what world record when it was completed in 1980?
Tallest dam
Tallest dam in the world was Nurek's title from its completion in 1980 until China's Jinping-I topped its roughly 300 metres in 2013; the Rogun Dam upstream is designed to rise to 335 metres.
A rice pilaf
A rice pilaf: oshi palav, cooked with rice, carrots, onions and meat in a qazan cauldron, was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2016.
Q 24Qurutob, a traditional Tajik dish, is made from pieces of flatbread soaked in what?
Yoghurt or dried-curd sauce
Yoghurt or dried-curd sauce: the name comes from qurut, balls of dried salted curd that are dissolved in water to soak pieces of fatir flatbread, then topped with onions, herbs and oil and eaten by hand.
Q 25In the traditional horseback game of buzkashi, played at spring festivals, riders compete to carry what?
A dead goat
A dead goat, headless and gutted, is the 'ball' in buzkashi; riders wrestle to carry the carcass clear of the pack and drop it in a scoring circle, playing solo or in teams.
Q 26What is Tajikistan's national sport?
Gushtigiri wrestling
Gushtigiri wrestling, a traditional belt-and-jacket style related to Uzbek kurash, is regarded as the national sport and is a staple of village festivals; it is also spelled gushtingiri.
Q 27Tajikistan's best Olympic results have come in which athletics event, with golds in 1992 and 2016?
Hammer throw
Hammer throw: Andrey Abduvaliyev won for the Unified Team in Barcelona in 1992 and Dilshod Nazarov won for Tajikistan in Rio in 2016, the country's first Olympic gold as an independent nation.
Q 28At the 2023 AFC Asian Cup, Tajikistan's footballers made their debut and reached which stage?
The quarter-finals
The quarter-finals: on their Asian Cup debut Tajikistan finished second in their group behind hosts Qatar, beat the United Arab Emirates on penalties in the round of 16, then lost 1-0 to Jordan.
Q 29Which spring festival, marking the equinox on 21 March, is Tajikistan's most important holiday?
Nowruz
Nowruz, the Persian new year at the spring equinox, is marked in Tajikistan with several days of public holidays from 21 March; Mehrgon is the autumn harvest festival and Sada falls fifty days before the new year.
Q 30In 1988 Tajik artisans built an ornate tea house as a gift to which American sister city?
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado, has been the sister city of the Tajik capital since 1987; the hand-carved and painted teahouse was shipped in crates and assembled beside Boulder Creek, opening as a restaurant in 1998.