[6] In 1905, the Jabrail uezd was officially renamed the Karyagino uezd as its center was transferred to the town Karyagino (present-day Fizuli), which was renamed from its original Karabulak in honor of Colonel Pavel Karyagin, a distinguished hero of the Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774) and the Russo-Persian War (1804-1813).

After the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the formation of the independent Transcaucasian republics, including the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918, the western mountainous districts of the Elizavetpol Governorate including the Shusha, Zangezur, Jebrail, Jevanshir, Kazakh and Elizavetpol uezds became subject to intense territorial disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan throughout 1918-1920, both of whom included these areas in their territorial pretensions that they presented in memorandums to the Paris Peace Conference.

Since the collapse of Russian authority in the Transcaucasus, the mountainous portion of the county which was overwhelmingly Armenian was governed by the de facto Karabakh Council which vehemently rejected Ottoman and Azerbaijani attempts to subordinate the region.

The subcounties (uchastoks) of the Jebrail uezd in 1912 were as follows:[9] There were 178 settlements in the county, the population of which was primarily engaged in agricultural farming, gardening, sericulture.

The statistics indicated Shia Muslims to be the plurality of the population with significant Armenian, Sunni Muslim, and Russian minorities:[13] According to Soviet census from 1926, the population fell to 75,371—due to the separation of the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from the district—of which 71,725 were Turks (i.e. Azerbaijanis), 625 - Armenians, 1,089 - Russians, 520 - Persians.