It is bounded on the north by Peshāwar District, and by the hills inhabited by the Jowāki and Pass Afrīdis; on the north-west by Orakzai Tīrāh; on the south-west by the Kābul Khel territory (Wazīristān); on the south-east by Bannu and the Miānwālī District of the Punjab; and on the east by the Indus.

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.

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 most fertile part is the Hangu tahsīl, which comprises the valley of Lower and Upper Mīrānzai.

Bounded on the north by the Safed Koh or 'White Mountain' (called in Pashtū the Spīn Ghar), which separates it from Ningrahār, it adjoins Pāra-Chamkanni and the country of the Māssozai section of the Orakzai and that of the Zaimusht tribe on the east, its south-eastern corner abutting on the Mīrānzai country of Kohāt District.

On the south it borders on Northern Wazīristān; and on the south-west and west it is contiguous with the Afghān district of Khost, of which the Jāji Maidan or plain, the Chamkanni country, and Hariob Jāji lie on its western extremity.At that time, the area that would later become Orakzai District was an unadministered patch of land known as Tīrāh.

The name is also used in an extended sense to include almost the whole territory except the Bāzār and Khyber valleys inhabited by these tribed, the portions occupied by them in the winter months being distinguished as Lower Tīrāh.

Tīrāh thus consists of the country watered by the Mastūrah, one of the main branches of the Bārā, which flows through the centre of the country, the Khānki Toi, and the Khurmāna — three rivers which rise within a few miles of Mittughar (12,470 feet), a point on the Safed Koh in 33° 55' N. and 70° 37' E.At the time of the One Unit policy, Kohat District became a part of the then-much-larger Peshawar Division.

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.

The two smaller districts of the division, Hangu (with an area of only 1,097 km2 (424 sq mi)) and Orakzai (with an area of 1,538 km2 (594 sq mi)) make up the interior of the division, wedged between the three larger districts to their west and east.

[1] Sadda, in Kurram District, is the fourth-largest city in Kohat Division, with about 35,000 inhabitants.

[16] In 1998, the dominant language in the division was Pashto, with over 90% of the population speaking it as their mother tongue.

[20] Of the remaining 5% of the population, most are suspected to speak the Kohati 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.