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
From 1929 to 1961 it was called Stalinabad. When it became capital in 1924 it was a village of about a thousand people.
Q 02The name of Tajikistan's capital means what in Persian?
Monday
Literally 'the second day after Saturday'. It grew from a village whose bazaar was held every Monday on the caravan routes between Bukhara and Afghanistan.
Q 03Roughly what share of Tajikistan is covered by mountains?
More than 90%
Most of the country lies above 3,000 metres in the Pamirs. Its glaciers feed the Amu Darya and, ultimately, the shrinking Aral Sea.
Q 04Which country lies along Tajikistan's southern border, marked by the Amu Darya and Panj rivers?
Afghanistan
Only Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor separates Tajikistan from Pakistan. Russian troops guarded the frontier until 2005.
Q 05In which year did Tajikistan declare independence from the Soviet Union?
1991
Independence Day is 9 September. Within months the country slid into a civil war that lasted until 1997.
Q 06Who won Tajikistan's November 1994 presidential election?
Emomali Rahmon
He had led the country since 1992 as chairman of the Supreme Soviet. Parliament gave him the title 'Founder of Peace and National Unity - Leader of the Nation' in 2015, with lifelong immunity.
Q 07Which alphabet replaced the Latin script for writing Tajik in 1940?
Cyrillic
Soviet planners had switched Tajik from Perso-Arabic to Latin in 1928; the 1940 change cut Tajiks off from the wider Persian world.
Q 08Under the constitution, which language is Tajikistan's official 'language of inter-ethnic communication'?
Russian
About 90% of the population speaks it to some degree, though ethnic Russians fell from 7.6% of the population in 1989 to about 0.5% after the civil war.
Q 09What is Tajikistan's currency, named after the founder of the Samanid state?
Somoni
It is divided into 100 dirams. The som, manat and tenge belong to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.
Q 10Tajikistan's highest mountain, at 7,495 metres, was known by what name from 1962 to 1998?
Communism Peak
It was Stalin Peak from 1933 until de-Stalinisation, and is now Ismoil Somoni Peak. It was the highest point in the entire Soviet Union.
Q 11Which 9th-10th century Transoxiana dynasty revived Persian culture and is claimed as the first Tajik state?
The Samanids
Ismail Samani made it independent of the Abbasids in 892. His name is on the currency, the highest peak and a giant statue in the capital.
Q 12Which Samanid court poet, the first major poet of New Persian, is a national icon of Tajikistan?
Rudaki
He reportedly wrote 180,000 verses, of which only fragments survive. Dushanbe's main avenue and a park bear his name.
Q 13Northern Tajikistan, including Khujand and Panjakent, belonged to which ancient Silk Road civilisation?
Sogdiana
Sogdian traders dominated the Silk Road for centuries. The Yaghnobi language, spoken by about 25,000 people, is its only living descendant.
Q 21Tajikistan's economy is one of the most dependent in the world on what, at nearly half of GDP in 2024?
Remittances from migrant workers
Around 2.4 million Tajik citizens were registered in Russia in 2021, and money sent home reached about US$5.8 billion in 2024.
Q 22Which metal, smelted by state-owned TadAZ, is one of Tajikistan's main sources of income?
Aluminium
The giant Tursunzoda smelter runs on cheap hydroelectricity even though the country mines no bauxite of its own.
Q 23What is oshi palav, Tajikistan's UNESCO-listed national dish?
A rice pilaf
Q 14Tajikistan's Yaghnobi language is the only direct descendant of which ancient tongue?
Sogdian
Linguists call it Neo-Sogdian. Soviet forced resettlements in the 20th century nearly wiped the community out.
Q 15Which historic Tajik cities were left in Uzbekistan when the Soviets drew Tajikistan in 1924?
Bukhara and Samarkand
Both remain largely Tajik-speaking cities in Uzbekistan, a lasting grievance. Khujand was added to Tajikistan in 1929.
Q 16Tajikistan went from an autonomous republic within Uzbekistan to a full Soviet republic in what year?
1929
The Sughd region around Khujand was added the same year, giving the new republic a slice of the fertile 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 UN-brokered deal is counted among its peacekeeping successes, though Rahmon later squeezed the Islamist opposition out of politics.
Q 18Tajikistan's flag has red, white and green stripes with what emblem in the centre?
A crown under seven stars
Adopted in 1992, it kept the colours of the Soviet-era flag. Seven is a lucky number in Persian tradition, standing for perfection.
Q 19The 165-metre flagpole outside the capital's Palace of Nations held what record from 2011 to 2014?
World's tallest
Jeddah beat it by six metres in 2014. The flag it flies measures 30 by 60 metres and weighs 700 kilograms.
Q 20The Nurek Dam on the Vakhsh River held what world record when it was completed in 1980?
Tallest dam
At 304 metres it is still second in the world. The Rogun Dam upstream, if finished at 335 metres, will take the title back.
Rice, carrots or yellow turnip and meat are fried together in a qazan cauldron. There are said to be up to 200 varieties.
Q 24Qurutob, a traditional Tajik dish, is made from pieces of flatbread soaked in what?
Yoghurt or dried-curd sauce
It is topped with onions and herbs and eaten by hand from a shared dish. Mantu, laghman and sambusa round out the table.
Q 25In the traditional horseback game of buzkashi, played at spring festivals, riders compete to carry what?
A dead goat
The 50 kg carcass must be carried clear of the pack and dropped in a circle. It can be played solo or in teams.
Q 26What is Tajikistan's national sport?
Gushtigiri wrestling
Dushanbe hosts the second World Gushtigiri Championship in August 2026 with a US$400,000 prize fund.
Q 27Tajikistan's best Olympic results have come in which athletics event, with golds in 1992 and 2016?
Hammer throw
Andrey Abduvaliyev won for the Unified Team in Barcelona and Dilshod Nazarov for Tajikistan in Rio, the country's first 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
They finished second in their group behind hosts Qatar and beat the United Arab Emirates on penalties in the round of 16.
Q 29Which spring festival, marking the equinox on 21 March, is Tajikistan's most important holiday?
Nowruz
Government workers get ten days off. 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
The hand-carved and painted Dushanbe Tea House still operates as a restaurant beside Boulder Creek.