It lies between the city of Vahdat in the west and Lakhsh District in the east; its southern neighbors are Nurobod, Sangvor, and Tojikobod districts; its northern border runs along the eastern finger of Sughd Region and along the international border with Kyrgyzstan.

[1] The district has an area of about 4,600 km2 (2,000 sq mi) and is divided administratively into two towns and twelve jamoats.

In 1929 Basmachi commander Faizal Maksum crossed from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and briefly captured the city Gharm, only to later be expelled by Soviet forces.

[5][6] In the 1920s, during the reorganization of borders in Central Asia, a Gharm Oblast was created out of the old Qarategin and Darvaz, districts of Bukhara.

These victims were Yutaka Akino, a noted Japanese scholar of Central Asian history, Major Ryszard Szewczyk from Poland; Major Adolfo Scharpegge from Uruguay; and Jourajon Mahramov from Tajikistan.