Nowshera District

Nowshera District: Quick Answers

Nowshera District is one of the 38 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with its headquarters at Nowshera. It has 3 tehsils: Jehangira, Nowshera and Pabbi. The 2023 census counted 1,740,705 people on 1,748 km², and 56.78% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.

Population

1,740,705 (2023 census)

Area

1,748 km² · 995.83 people per km²

Urban population

19.64%

Annual growth 2017–2023

2.28%

Average household size

6.7

Population in 2017

1,520,995

Sex ratio

103.78 males per 100 females

Literacy rate (age 10+)

56.78% · male 68.53% · female 44.49%

Largest urban localities (2023)

Nowshera Kalan 88,472 · Jehangira 57,011 · Pabbi 52,701 · Amangarh 42,159 · Risalpur Cantonment 36,074

Main mother tongues

Pashto 95.04% · Hindko 2.25% · Punjabi 1.08%

Tehsils

3 – Jehangira, Nowshera and Pabbi

Headquarters

Nowshera

Province / territory

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Known for

Nowshera is a cantonment and industrial district on the Kabul River.

Culture

Pashto is the mother tongue of about 95% of residents; Hindko is the largest minority language (PBS 2023).

Education

PAF Academy Asghar Khan is at Risalpur, and Darul Uloom Haqqania (founded 1947) is at Akora Khattak.

Healthcare

Qazi Hussain Ahmad Medical Complex, Nowshera, is the district’s main medical teaching institute.

Villages / local areas

Nowshera Kalan, Jehangira, Pabbi, Amangarh and Akora Khattak are the census urban localities.

Nowshera District: 2023 census figures by tehsil

Name	Type	Population	Area (km²)	Urban	Literacy (10+)
Jehangira	Tehsil	434,984	718	19.95%	56.92%
Nowshera	Tehsil	796,226	679	25.43%	56.76%
Pabbi	Tehsil	509,495	351	10.34%	56.7%

Source: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Census 2023, Table 1. Checked 2026-09-29.

Nowshera is the GT Road district between Peshawar and Attock. The Kabul River cuts the town. Cantonment, Risalpur and the river flats sit in one file. July–August 2010 is the flood year families still use as a calendar mark. This is not Mohmand and it is not Mansehra. It is a river-and-garrison district on a national highway.

Pashto is the main tongue. Jehangira tehsil’s 2023 row also prints about 24,500 Hindko speakers beside 408,000 Pashto speakers. That mix is the Attock-facing side, not a typing error.

Nowshera: 2023 sheet

Households 259,774. Population 1,740,705. Urban about 342,000 (20 percent) — far more urban than Lower Dir or Mohmand. Literacy 56.78 percent — 68.53 percent for men, 44.49 percent for women. Under-tens about 27–28 percent of the surveyed count. Site: nowshera.kp.gov.pk.

Nowshera town, the cantonment, Pabbi and Jehangira are the named urban places. Akora Khattak is the old town name on the same road.

Nowshera: Three tehsils, literacy almost flat

Unusual for KP: the three tehsil literacy figures sit within one point of each other.

Nowshera tehsil — 679 km², 796,226 people, literacy about 56.8 percent. Headquarters, cantonment, river town. Nearly half the district.

Pabbi tehsil — 351 km², 509,495 people, literacy about 56.7 percent. Closest to Peshawar’s eastern edge. Smallest land of the three.

Jehangira tehsil — 718 km², 434,984 people, literacy about 56.9 percent. Largest land. About 87,000 urban in that tehsil table, rest rural. Hindko minority row is here.

Same literacy, different jobs: garrison and workshops in Nowshera, commuter villages in Pabbi, river-and-road towns in Jehangira.

Nowshera: Campus, hospital, the river

Government colleges and a university campus presence sit in Nowshera. Students also ride into Peshawar in under an hour when the road is open. DHQ Nowshera is the first hospital. The 2010 flood is why people still argue about embankments before they argue about a second campus.

Sources: PBS 2023; tehsil literacy rows; Jehangira tongue table. September 2026.