50 free Yemen trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Yemen trivia quiz covers the ancient and the modern: the Sabaean kingdom of biblical Sheba and its Great Dam at Marib, the Himyarites, the coffee monopoly exported through Mocha, the Ottoman and British partitions, and the two Yemens that finally merged in 1990. It also covers the crisis years — Ali Abdullah Saleh's fall, the Houthi takeover, the Saudi-led intervention and the famine and cholera that followed. Along the way you'll meet Yemen's landmarks and culture: the tower houses of Sanaa's Old City, the mud skyscrapers of Shibam, the dragon's blood trees of Socotra, Arabia's highest peak, the jambiya dagger, khat and saltah, and the strait called the Gate of Grief. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the constitutional capital and largest city of Yemen?
Sanaa
It sits on a plateau above 2,000 metres; the government fled to a 'temporary' capital in the south when the Houthis seized it in 2015.
Q 02Which two countries share a land border with Yemen?
Saudi Arabia and Oman
Across the water it also faces Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia; it is the second-largest country on the Arabian Peninsula.
Q 03The ancient South Arabian kingdom of Saba is thought to be which biblical land?
Sheba
Its rulers took the title Mukarrib, roughly 'unifier'; the kingdom's influence reached across the Red Sea into Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Q 04What is the legendary queen who visited Solomon called in Arabic tradition?
Bilqis
Makeda is her Ethiopian name; the great 12th-century ruler Arwa al-Sulayhi was nicknamed 'the junior queen of Sheba' in her honour.
Q 05The Sabaeans' Great Dam, an ancient engineering marvel, stood near which city, their capital?
Marib
Its final collapse around 575 is mentioned in the Quran; a Roman army of 10,000 was defeated before it could reach the city in 25 BC.
Q 06Which Judaism-influenced kingdom succeeded Saba around AD 275 and unified most of Yemen?
Himyarite
Its last rulers were caught between Christian Aksum and Persia; the Sassanids annexed Yemen around 570.
Q 07Through which Red Sea port did Yemen export its coffee, lending its name to a chocolate-coffee drink?
Mocha
By the 17th century Yemen was the world's sole coffee producer; Europeans broke the monopoly by smuggling out trees for their colonies.
Q 08The earliest reports of coffee drinking come from the mid-15th century among which group in Yemen?
Sufi mystics
They drank it to stay awake for night devotions; the habit spread to Mecca and Cairo within a century.
Q 09Which port did Britain seize in 1839, holding it until 1967?
Aden
It became a vital coaling station on the route to India; 5,000 tribesmen failed to retake it that November.
Q 10South Yemen, independent from 1967, held what distinction in the Middle East?
The region's only communist state
The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen was aligned with the Soviet Union until it merged with the north.
Q 11In which year did North and South Yemen unite into the modern Republic of Yemen?
1990
The merger took effect on 22 May; a civil war between the two halves followed within four years.
Q 12Who was the first president of unified Yemen, in power until the Arab Spring forced him out in 2012?
Ali Abdullah Saleh
He had already run North Yemen since 1978; he famously compared governing Yemen to 'dancing on the heads of snakes'.
Q 13How did Yemen's long-time strongman, ousted in 2012, die in December 2017?
Killed by his erstwhile Houthi allies
He had switched sides against the Houthis days earlier and was caught trying to flee the capital.
Q 21The Old City of Yemen's capital, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been inhabited for roughly how long?
More than 2,500 years
Its Great Mosque dates from the 7th century, and the Salt Market still sells spices, raisins, copper and silver.
Q 22Zabid, a former capital and centre of Islamic learning, was placed on which UNESCO list in 2000?
World Heritage in Danger
About 40% of its historic houses had been replaced with concrete; it had been a World Heritage Site only since 1993.
Q 23Jabal an-Nabi Shu'ayb, the highest mountain in Yemen and in all of Arabia, is roughly how tall?
3,666 m
Q 14The Houthi movement, which seized the capital in 2014, follows which branch of Islam?
Zaydi Shia
Officially called Ansar Allah, it grew out of a 1990s revivalist movement in the northern highlands, where Zaydi imams had ruled for a thousand years.
Q 15Which country launched 'Operation Decisive Storm' against the Houthis in March 2015?
Saudi Arabia
It led a coalition of mostly Arab states after President Hadi fled abroad; the Houthis were accused of receiving Iranian support.
Q 16Which Yemeni city declared itself the country's 'temporary' capital in 2015?
Aden
President Hadi fled there, his home town, after escaping house arrest in the north.
Q 17Roughly what share of Yemen's population needed humanitarian aid in 2019, the world's highest?
About 75%
Some 24 million people; a cholera epidemic in 2017 was at one point killing a person an hour.
Q 18Which Yemeni island, closer to Africa than Arabia, has about a third of its plant species found nowhere else?
Socotra
About 90% of its reptiles and 95% of its land snails are also endemic; the Portuguese held a fort there in the early 1500s.
Q 19The umbrella-shaped dragon's blood tree of Yemen's islands is named for what?
Its dark red resin
The resin has been traded since antiquity as a dye, varnish and medicine; the tree's shape channels fog moisture down to its roots.
Q 20Shibam, nicknamed the 'Manhattan of the Desert', is famous for what?
Tower blocks built of mudbrick
About 500 mud towers rise five to eleven storeys, some over 30 metres, making them early high-rise apartment buildings.
The western highlands catch the heaviest rain in Arabia, over 1,000 mm a year at Ibb, feeding terraces carved up the mountainsides.
Q 24What is the Tihamah?
The hot, flat Red Sea coastal plain
The name means 'hot lands'; its lagoons breed malaria mosquitoes and its evaporation is so fierce that highland streams never reach the sea.
Q 25The strait between Yemen and Djibouti, connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, has a name meaning what?
Gate of Grief
Bab-el-Mandeb's name is blamed on the perils of its navigation, or on an earthquake legend; it is one of the world's key shipping chokepoints.
Q 26Which stimulant leaf, chewed socially across Yemen, consumes up to 40% of the water drawn from Sanaa's basin?
Khat
Its active compound is cathinone; a British newspaper warned in 2009 that Yemen could become the first nation to run out of water.
Q 27What is a jambiya?
A curved dagger worn at the belt
The most prized hilts are rhinoceros horn, at up to $1,500 a kilo, a trade that helped push the black rhino to critical endangerment.
Q 28Saltah, Yemen's national dish, is a meat stew topped with a froth made from which spice?
Fenugreek
The whipped hulba is added along with sahawiq, a fresh salsa of chillies, tomatoes and garlic, and it is eaten with flatbread at lunchtime.
Q 29What is Yemen's most popular sport?
Football
The country's mountains, with peaks above 3,000 metres, also draw climbing and trekking tours in calmer times.
Q 30Which of these is Yemen's largest island?
Socotra
Jabal al-Tair is a volcano that erupted as recently as 2007; the archipelago in the Arabian Sea is bio-geographically part of Africa.