Mardan Division · headquarters Swabi · 1,894,600 people in 2023 · Topi, Lahor and Razar on the same plain
Swabi District is one of the 38 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with its headquarters at Swabi. It has 4 tehsils: Lahor, Razar, Swabi and Topi. The 2023 census counted 1,894,600 people on 1,543 km², and 58.48% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lahor | Tehsil | 354,383 | 318 | 13.07% | 54.16% |
| Razar | Tehsil | 682,303 | 418 | 4.07% | 56.61% |
| Swabi | Tehsil | 475,352 | 389 | 40.12% | 63.23% |
| Topi | Tehsil | 382,562 | 418 | 19.57% | 59.83% |
Swabi is the Yusufzai plain between Mardan and the Indus. The town of Swabi is the headquarters. Topi sits toward Tarbela. Lahor is the Indus-facing tehsil. Razar is the largest count. This is farm country and campus country at the same time. Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute at Topi is the degree name the rest of Pakistan already uses. The district is not only that campus.
Pashto is the language of the houses. Topi tehsil’s 2023 row also prints about 21,000 Hindko speakers beside 352,000 Pashto speakers. That is the Tarbela-facing mix.
Swabi has sent voices and books into Pashto as well as officers and politicians. The names below are the ones newspapers and district notes already print. A full register of every singer at every hujra does not exist in one official book.
Pashto music and verse. Haroon Bacha — singer, composer, journalist. Salman Tabassum — folk singer, pupil of the late Kifayat Shah Bacha. Gulwareen — newer folk and recorded work; Haroon Bacha is his uncle. Farman Kashkar of Tarkai — comic Pashto verse that spread on video. Taskeen Manerwal — Pashto poet. Abdul Qadir — listed in district notes as a founder figure of the Pashto Academy at Peshawar University.
Other public names from the same district. Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum of the Topi side — first chief minister of the old NWFP and a founder name of Islamia College Peshawar. Asad Qaiser — former Speaker of the National Assembly. Nigar Johar — first woman to reach lieutenant general in the Pakistan Army. Bushra Gohar and Gulalai Ismail — public activists whose work is already in the national press. Mir Azam — first-class cricket. GIKI at Topi is the campus, not a person, but it is the institution this district is known for outside KP.
Some film-history notes also tie Madhubala’s father, Attaullah Khan, to Swabi before Bombay. Treat that as a published claim, not as a census fact.
Households 278,976. Population 1,894,600. Area 1,543 km². Urban about 340,000. Rural about 1.55 million. Literacy 58.48 percent — 72.34 percent for men, 44.50 percent for women. Under-tens about 520,000 (28 percent). Density is above 1,200 people per km². Site: swabi.kp.gov.pk.
Topi municipal count in city lists is about 74,900. Swabi town is the other urban name. Most of Razar still prints as village.
Razar — 418 km², 682,303 people, literacy about 56.6 percent. Largest tehsil by population.
Swabi — 389 km², 475,352 people, literacy about 63.2 percent. Headquarters. Highest literacy of the four.
Topi — 418 km², 382,562 people, literacy about 59.8 percent. GIKI and the Tarbela road.
Lahor — 318 km², 354,383 people, literacy about 54.2 percent. Lowest literacy of the four. Indus side.
GIKI at Topi is the engineering campus. Government colleges sit in Swabi, Topi and Lahor. DHQ Swabi is the first public hospital. Tarbela’s labour market and the Indus road pay part of Topi. Female literacy at 45 percent is stronger than Shangla; it is still the line that decides whether a girl in Razar finishes school after a shooting on her street.
Sources: PBS 2023; tehsil literacy rows; Topi tongue table. September 2026.
Swabi District has 4 tehsils: Lahor, Razar, Swabi and Topi.
The 2023 census counted 1,894,600 people in Swabi District, up from 1,625,477 in 2017 (annual growth 2.59%). 17.93% of the population lived in urban areas.
Swabi District covers 1,543 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 1,227.87 people per km².
The 2023 census lists 5 urban localities in Swabi District: Swabi (156,496, municipal committee), Topi (74,867, municipal committee), Tordher (46,320, town committee), Zaida (34,200, municipal committee) and Kernal Sher Killi (27,787, town committee).
58.48% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 72.34%, female 44.5%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Pashto (97.23% of the 1,890,230 people in the mother-tongue table), followed by Hindko (2.05%).
Swabi District is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its headquarters is Swabi.