Middle East Map Quiz

Click mode names a country and you click it. Saudi Arabia and Iran are generous targets. Bahrain is a small island, and Lebanon and Palestine are thin slivers, so zoom in on the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean coast before you start.

Build the Arabian Peninsula around Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia takes up most of the peninsula, so place everything else against it. Yemen is along its southern edge, at the corner where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. Oman wraps the southeast corner, facing the Arabian Sea. The United Arab Emirates sits on the Gulf coast between Oman and Qatar.

Then the three small Gulf states, which are where most misses happen on this map. Kuwait is at the very head of the Gulf, squeezed between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Qatar is the peninsula pointing north into the Gulf. Bahrain is the small island just off Qatar's west coast, small enough that you will want to zoom in for it.

The Levant, north to south

Along the eastern Mediterranean coast, work down from Türkiye: Syria, then Lebanon, a narrow coastal strip west of Syria, then Israel. Palestine comes in two separate pieces, the West Bank west of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip on the coast next to Egypt. Jordan sits east of Israel and the West Bank and reaches the sea only at a short stretch of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Iraq fills the space between Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the Tigris and Euphrates running through it. Iran is the large country east of Iraq, with the Caspian Sea to its north and the Gulf to its south.

The edges of the map

Türkiye bridges Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus, and Cyprus is the island south of it in the eastern Mediterranean. With Egypt, they sit on the edges of the usual definition, so they are easy to forget; expect them in the quiz. Cyprus and Türkiye also turn up in the Europe map quiz.

Capitals to watch

• Türkiye: Ankara, not Istanbul.
• United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi, not Dubai.
• Saudi Arabia: Riyadh, in the interior, not the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
• Kuwait: Kuwait City, the easiest capital here, since the name doubles up.
• Israel: Jerusalem; its status is disputed internationally and most embassies are in Tel Aviv.
• Bahrain and Qatar: Manama and Doha, the pair most often swapped.

Palestine in this quiz

Palestine is a UN observer state and is included on the map. It is left out of capital questions: Palestine proclaims East Jerusalem as its capital, while its government sits in Ramallah, and the question is part of an unresolved dispute. Our borders and names policy explains how we handle cases like this.

For a paper version, the blank map of the Middle East prints these 17 countries in blank, outline, numbered and labelled versions. The Asia map quiz places them in the wider continent, from the Caucasus to Japan.

All the countries and capitals in this quiz

The 17 countries usually grouped as the Middle East: the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Iraq, Iran, Türkiye, Cyprus and Egypt. Borders and names policy.

Names and capitals: CIA World Factbook (final edition), checked against Wikidata and Natural Earth. Flags: flag-icons, each checked against Wikimedia Commons. See sources. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.