Kohat Division is one of seven

division Division or divider may refer to: Mathematics *Division (mathematics), the inverse of multiplication *Division algorithm, a method for computing the result of mathematical division Military *Division (military), a formation typically consisting ...

s in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ps, خېبر پښتونخوا; Urdu, Hindko: خیبر پختونخوا) commonly abbreviated as KP or KPK, is one of the Administrative units of Pakistan, four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, ...

province. It consists of five

districts A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

: Hangu, Karak,

Kohat Kohat ( ps, کوهاټ; ur, ) is a city that serves as the capital of the Kohat District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is regarded as a centre of the Bangash tribe of Pashtuns, who have lived in the region since the late 15th century ...

, Kurram, and

Orakzai The Orakzai are a Pashtun tribe native to the Orakzai Agency and parts of Kurram Agency located in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. They speak the language Pashto. Location The Orakzai belong to the Tirah valley located in FATA or ...

. According to the 2017 Pakistani Census, the division had a population of 3,211,458, making it the third-least populous division in the province, and it spans of area, and this makes it the fourth-largest division by area in the province.

is the division's largest city and namesake, with over 220,000 inhabitants. The division borders

Bannu Division Bannu Division is one of seven divisions in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It consists of three districts: Bannu, Lakki Marwat, and North Waziristan. According to the 2017 Pakistani Census, the division had a population of 2,656,801, ...

to the south and west,

Peshawar Division Peshawar (; ps, پېښور ; hnd, ; ; ur, ) is the sixth most populous city in Pakistan, with a population of over 2.3 million. It is situated in the north-west of the country, close to the International border with Afghanistan. It is ...

to the north and east, the province of

Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...

to its east, and the country of

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

to its northwest.

Districts

Districts are the administrative unit one level below divisions in the administrative hierarchy of Pakistan. Kohat Division consists of the following five

History

In 1941, the area which today covers the division (excluding Orakzai and Kurram) was known as Kohat District. Kohat District was one of five trans-Indus districts in the North-West Frontier Province of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. It was split into the Tehsils of Hangu, Kohat, and Teri. Here is a description of the area given by the Imperial Gazetteer of India. Kurram, on the other hand, was an agency in the province bordering Kohat District. It is also described in the Gazetteer. At that time, the area that would later become Orakzai District was an unadministered patch of land known as Tīrāh. Its description is below. At the time of the One Unit policy, Kohat District became a part of the then-much-larger

. When the policy ended, though, Kohat District stayed in the division. The area received full-fledged division status between the Pakistani censuses of 1981 and 1998, and during the same time period, Hangu Tehsil and Karak Tehsil (formerly Teri Tehsil) were also upgraded, to district status (becoming Hangu District and

Lakki Marwat District Lakki Marwat ( ps, لکی مروت ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district in Bannu Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. It was created as an administrative district on July 1, 1992, prior to which it was a tehsil of Bannu District ...

). In August 2000, Kohat Division was abolished along with every other division in the country, but was reinstated (with all the other divisions of Pakistan) eight years later after the elections of 2008. In 2018, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan was passed by the

Parliament of Pakistan The Parliament of Pakistan ( ur, , , "Pakistan Advisory Council" or "Pakistan Consultative Assembly") is the federal and supreme legislative body of Pakistan. It is a bicameral federal legislature that consists of the Senate as the upper ...

and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. This entirely and fully merged the seven agencies of the

Federally Administered Tribal Areas , conventional_long_name = Federally Administered Tribal Areas , nation = Pakistan , subdivision = Autonomous territory , image_flag = Flag of FATA.svg , image_coat = File:Coat of arms ...

and the six

Frontier Regions The Frontier Regions (often abbreviated as FR) of Pakistan were a group of small administrative units in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), lying immediately to the east of the seven main tribal agencies and west of the settled distr ...

with the province of

. With this merger, Kohat Division gained the agencies of Kurram and Orakzai, which became

, and the Frontier Region Kohat (which was fully merged into

Kohat District Kohat District ( ps, کوهاټ ولسوالۍ , ur, ) is a district in Kohat Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Kohat city is the capital of the district. History Mughal era From the early sixteenth century the history of Ko ...

as Darra Adam Khel Subdivision).

Geography

Kohat Division has a total area of . Kurram and Karak Districts are the two largest districts in the division, having areas of and respectively. Together they make up about 55% of the area of the division.

, despite being the most populous, comes in as the third-largest district in the province with an area of . The two smaller districts of the division, Hangu (with an area of only ) and

(with an area of ) make up the interior of the division, wedged between the three larger districts to their west and east. The important

Kurram River The Kurrama River ( ps, د کورمې سيند), or Kurram River, originates from watershed of Spin Ghar in the Paktia Province of Afghanistan and the Kurram District of Pakistan, flows through North Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, passing t ...

(a major tributary of the

Indus River The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...

) begins in this division, in Kurram District.

Surrounding areas

To Kohat Division's northeast, you will find

, to the division's southwest,

can be found. To the southeast of Kohat Division, the divisions of

Sargodha Sargodha (Punjabi and ur, ) is a city and capital of Sargodha Division, located in Punjab province, Pakistan. It is Pakistan's 12th largest city by population and one of the fastest-growing cities of the country. Sargodha is also known as t ...

and

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...

in the province of Punjab can be found, and Kohat Division borders the country of

to its northwest.

Demographics

As of the 2017 Census of Pakistan, the division had a population of 3,211,458, out of which there were 1,591,494

male Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...

s, 1,619,908

female Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gamet ...

s, and 57 people who identified as

Transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

; this made the

sex ratio The sex ratio (or gender ratio) is usually defined as the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. Many species devia ...

of the division 982 males for every 1,000 females, and makes it very unique among the divisions of Pakistan and across all of South Asia, as in most of Pakistan and South Asia, males are the majority. The division had 355,594 households, making the average household size of the division 9.03, one of the highest in Pakistan; 463,732 people in the division lived in an urban area, but the majority (2,747,726) lived in a rural area, making the urbanization rate of the division a 14.43%, far below the national average Geographically, it is the Districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa#Divisions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, fourth-largest division in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and has the fifth-largest (or third-smallest) population. It has a population density of , making it the second-least densely populated division in the province. Kohat Division had nine urbanized municipalities in 2017. Their names were (ordered by population)

, Karak, Hangu, Sadda, Tall, Lachi,

Doaba Doaba also known as Bist Doab, is the region of Punjab, India that lies between the Beas River and the Sutlej River. People of this region are given the demonym "Doabia". The dialect of Punjabi spoken in Doaba is called "Doabi". Th ...

, Shakardara, and

Parachinar Parachinar ( ps, پاړه چنار; ur, ) is a small Pashtun ( Turi and Bangash tribe) town which is the capital of Kurram District in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Parachinar is situated on a neck of Pakistani territory west ...

, the division's namesake and largest city, is situated in

and has over 200,000 inhabitants. Kohat is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's fourth-largest city and is a fast-growing city whose population grew at a rate of more than 3% every year between 1998 and 2017. Karak, Kohat Division's third-largest city, is the largest city and namesake of

Karak District Karak District ( ps, کرک ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district in Kohat Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. It is situated to the south of Kohat District and on the north side of Bannu and Lakki Marwat districts on the main I ...

. Having a population just over 50,000, it is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 24th largest city. Hangu, Kohat Division's second-largest city, is the largest city and namesake of Hangu District. Having a population just under 50,000, it is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 27th largest city. In 1998, Hangu was larger than Karak, but due to Karak's fast growth, has been overtaken. Sadda, in

Kurram District Kurram District ( ps, کرم ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district in Kohat Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan.The name Kurram comes from the river Kuramá ( ps, کورمه) in Pashto which itself derives from the Sanskrit name K ...

, is the fourth-largest city in Kohat Division, with about 35,000 inhabitants. It was the second-largest city in the now-defunct

and is the 40th largest city in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is a fast-growing city (with a population growth rate of 3.75% every year between 1998 and 2017, which means its population more than doubled during that period) and is more than six times larger than

, Kurram District's administrative district capital.

Orakzai District Orakzai District ( ps, اورکزو ولسوالۍ, ur, ) is a district in Kohat Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Until 2018, it was an agency of Federally Administered Tribal Areas. With the merger of FATA with Khyber Pakht ...

is the only district in the division without a single urbanized area. It is entirely rural. The division has one cantonment, the Kohat Cantonment, adjacent to the city of Kohat which had a population of 36,935, making up the division's entire military population. This made 1.15% of the entire population of the division active military personnel. In 1998, the dominant language in the division was

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

, with over 90% of the population speaking it as their mother tongue. Punjabi is spoken by about 1% of the population, and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Saraiki are spoken by about 0.35% and 0.3% of the population respectively. Of the remaining 5% of the population, most are suspected to speak the

Kohati Kohāṭī is a Hindko dialect of Kohat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, north-western Pakistan. It is spoken in the city of Kohat as well as in a string of villages running east along the road to Kushalgarh on the Indus. The dominant language of th ...

dialect of Hindko (a language for which official statistics were not collected in 1998), which was predominant in urban Kohat more than a century ago.

Notes

:A. Before 2018, the Kurram Agency (now

), the Orakzai Agency (now

), and the Frontier Region Kohat were not a part of Kohat Division, but were a part of the

, then outside

. :B. There were only three constituencies solely inside Kohat Division at the time of the 2018 Pakistani general election, but there was a fourth constituency, NA-51, that was made of regions from different divisions. NA-51 covered the Frontier Region Kohat in Kohat Division, but the area only makes up 33.15% of the population of the constituency and 3.69% of the population of the division, so it is omitted in the infobox. That seat was won by Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal. :C. At the time of the 2018 Pakistani general election,

sent three representatives to the KPK Assembly and Hangu District and

sent two each, but elections were held a year later (in 2019) in the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that were formerly part of the

. At the time of the 2019 elections,

elected two representatives, and

elected one representative, which add up to ten for the entire division. Once again, though, there was another constituency, PK-115, that was made of regions from different divisions. PK-115 (just like NA-51) covered the Frontier Region Kohat in Kohat Division, but the area only makes up 33.15% of the population of the constituency and 3.69% of the population of the division, so it is omitted in the infobox. The seat was won by

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (Fazl) also Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) or simply as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Urdu: ; ; JUI-F) is a Deobandi Sunni political party in Pakistan. Established as the ''Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam'' in 1945, it is the result o ...

References

{{Reflist Divisions of Pakistan