South of Kohat · 3,371 km² · 815,878 people in 2023 · only about 7 percent counted as urban
Karak District is one of the 38 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with its headquarters at Karak. It has 3 tehsils: Banda Daud Shah, Karak and Takht-e-Nasrati. The 2023 census counted 815,878 people on 3,371 km², and 65.36% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banda Daud Shah | Tehsil | 177,744 | 1,465 | – | 53.95% |
| Karak | Tehsil | 339,983 | 1,299 | 17.08% | 67.76% |
| Takht-e-Nasrati | Tehsil | 298,151 | 607 | – | 69.55% |
Karak is Khattak country on the dry plateau between Kohat and Bannu. Older papers still say Teri for the old tehsil. The town of Karak is the headquarters. Takht-e-Nasrati and Banda Daud Shah are the other two poles. Oil and gas wells are part of the modern economy; they do not turn the district into a city.
Pashto is the language of almost every household in the tehsil tongue tables (Banda Daud Shah’s 2023 row is 176,885 Pashto speakers out of 177,744 people). That is a different picture from Haripur’s Hindko majority or Dera’s Saraiki–Pashto mix.
PBS 2023: 815,878 people, 95,997 households. Urban 58,065. Rural 757,813. Sex ratio about 107 men per 100 women. Under-tens about 242,000 (30 percent). Literacy 65.36 percent overall — 84.12 percent for men, 45.60 percent for women. The male figure is high. The female figure is the gap that actually describes school life outside the town.
Karak municipal council is essentially the whole urban row. The other tehsils print as rural in the household tables.
Karak tehsil — 1,299 km², 339,983 people, about 262 per km², literacy about 67.8 percent. Headquarters and the only sizeable municipal town. About 58,000 of this tehsil is urban; the rest is village.
Takht-e-Nasrati — 607 km², 298,151 people, about 491 per km², literacy about 69.6 percent. Smallest area, highest density of the three. This is not an empty desert tehsil.
Banda Daud Shah — 177,744 people in 2023 (155,482 in 2017). Literacy on the district tehsil list about 54 percent. The compiled table lists the tehsil as all rural. Named for the town of Banda Daud Shah.
Hydrocarbon work is why outsiders know the name Karak. Local employment from wells and related contracts sits beside ordinary wheat and livestock. When a well site is quiet, the town still has to live on shops and government pay.
Government colleges and a university campus presence are in Karak town. DHQ Karak is the first hospital. THQ-style cover at Takht-e-Nasrati and Banda Daud Shah is what the farther villages use. Khushal Khan Khattak is the poet this belt claims; that is literature class, not a festival paragraph.
Sources: PBS 2023 district and tehsil compilations; Banda Daud Shah tongue row; KP literacy table for Karak and Takht-e-Nasrati. September 2026.
This district guide is structured around common searches for Karak district, its location and administrative context. District-level facts are kept separate from city, division and province-level information.
Karak District has 3 tehsils: Banda Daud Shah, Karak and Takht-e-Nasrati.
The 2023 census counted 815,878 people in Karak District, up from 705,362 in 2017 (annual growth 2.46%). 7.12% of the population lived in urban areas.
Karak District covers 3,371 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 242.03 people per km².
The 2023 census lists 1 urban locality in Karak District: Karak (58,065, municipal committee).
65.36% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 84.12%, female 45.6%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Pashto (99.78% of the 815,150 people in the mother-tongue table).
Karak District is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its headquarters is Karak.
Karak became a separate district on 1 July 1982. Before that it was part of Kohat District. (District Administration Karak)