diff --git a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
index 61f2b95d94c..ec4388070b9 100644
--- a/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
+++ b/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/search/query/SimpleQueryTests.java
@@ -2456,6 +2456,10 @@ public class SimpleQueryTests extends ElasticsearchIntegrationTest {
 
         refresh();
 
+        // Ensure all shards have our mappings, otherwise we can sometimes fail to hit the expected exceptions below, because some shards
+        // will succeed in running a query (that returns 0 hits) instead of throwing the expected exception:
+        waitForConcreteMappingsOnAll("test", "type1", "date", "num");
+
         SearchResponse searchResponse = client().prepareSearch("test")
                 .setQuery(QueryBuilders.rangeQuery("date").from("2014-01-01T00:00:00").to("2014-01-01T00:59:00"))
                 .get();