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. 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. {{Blockquote The District consists of a succession of ranges of broken hills, whose general trend is east and west, and between which lie open valleys, seldom more than 4 or 5 miles in width. These ranges are of no great height, though several peaks attain an altitude of 4,700 or 4,900 feet. As the District is generally elevated, Hangu to the northward being 2,800 feet and Kohāt, its head-quarters, 1,700 feet above sea-level, the ranges rise to only inconsiderable heights above the plain. The general slope is to the east, towards the Indus, but on the south-west the fall is towards the west into the Kurram river. The principal streams are the Kohāt and Teri Tois (‘streams’), both tributaries of the Indus, and the Shkalai which flows into the Kurram. The Kohāt Toi rises in the Māmozai hills. It has but a small perennial flow, which disapeears before it reaches the town of Kohāt, but the stream reappears some miles lower down and thence flows continuously to the Indus. The Teri Toi has little or no perennial flow, and the Shkalai is also small, though perennial. The most fertile part is the Hangu
tahsīl, which comprises the valley of Lower and Upper Mīrānzai. The rest of the district consists of ranges of hills much broken into spurs, ravines, and valleys, which are sometimes cultivated but more often bare and sandy. Kurram, on the other hand, was an agency in the province bordering Kohat District. It is also described in the Gazetteer. {{Blockquote At that time, the area that would later become Orakzai District was an unadministered patch of land known as Tīrāh. Its description is below. {{Blockquote At the time of the
One Unit policy, Kohat District
became a part of the then-much-larger
Peshawar Division. 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). 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 and the
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. This entirely and fully merged the seven agencies of the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the six
Frontier Regions with the province of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. With this merger, Kohat Division gained the agencies of Kurram and Orakzai, which became
districts, and the
Frontier Region Kohat (which was fully merged into
Kohat District as Darra Adam Khel Subdivision). == Geography ==