[1] The area of the county roughly corresponded to the contemporary Lori Province of Armenia and the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia.

The Turkic locals were resettled to the Debed river valley through the policy of Shah Abbas I (c.1571-1629) after his successful campaigns against the Kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti that led to the formation of several Qizilbash khanates.

Most of northern Lori centered around Alaverdi was transformed into a neutral zone and patrolled by British troops of the 27th Division, until their mid-1919 withdrawal.

The Armenians later complaining that the Georgian force was unsuccessfully trying to convince Tatar and Russian villages in the neutral zone to agree to join Georgia.

The plurality of the population indicated Armenian to be their mother tongue, with significant Tatar,[b] Greek, Russian, and Georgian speaking minorities.