[4] The lower part, Arran, was hot and dry during summers which made the inhabitants move to mountainous areas for the duration of season.

The administrative center of the uezd was the town Terter, located on the Yelisavetpol (Ganja)-Shusha road, about 681.6 versts from the provincial capital.

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 uezd, which was overwhelmingly Armenian, was governed by the de facto Karabakh Council which vehemently rejected Ottoman and Azerbaijani attempts to subordinate the region.

Following the establishment of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, the county was partitioned into several rayons, with the overwhelmingly Armenian subsections forming part of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.