It bordered the governorate's Etchmiadzin and Erivan uezds to the north, the Kars Oblast to the west, Persia to the east, and the Ottoman Empire to the south.

[1][4][5] The castle of Surmari still stands today in the village of Sürmeli [tr] near the Armenia–Turkey border within the Tuzluca district of Turkey's Iğdır Province.

[6] A part of Persia's Erivan Khanate, Surmalu was annexed by the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Turkmenchay in the aftermath of the Russo-Persian War of 1826–28.

[7] In 1829, Baltic German explorer Friedrich Parrot of the University of Dorpat (Tartu) traveled to Surmalu as part of his expedition to climb Mount Ararat.

[10] The subcounties (uchastoks) of the Surmalu uezd in 1913 were as follows:[11] According to the Russian family lists accounts from 1886, of the total 71,066 inhabitants of the district, 34,351 were Tatars[b] (48.3%), 22,096 Armenians (31.1%), and 14,619 Kurds (20.6%).