Attock District is a district in Pothohar Plateau of Punjab. Created in April 1904 by the merging of tehsils of nearby districts it was named initially as Campbellpur. It is located in the north of the Punjab province, bordered by Chakwal to the south, Mianwali to the southwest, Rawalpindi to the east, Kohat to the west, Nowshera to the northwest, and Swabi and Haripur to the north. The Indus River flows along the western boundary of the district for about 130 km.
Attock is the eastern terminus of the Kabul-Attock and is a corridor to Central Asia. However, unlike the modern highways, this corridor is not a work of engineering marvel but an act of nature as it was naturally carved through the Hindu Kush Mountains by the Kabul River and its numerous tributary rivers and streams. The 435 miles long journey of River Kabul starts just west of the Kabul City in Afghanistan and ends at Attock where it ultimately falls into the River Indus.
Attock is a place of great historic significance. Mughal emperor Akbar the Great, the grandson of Babar, recognized the strategic importance of this area in 1581 and built the famous Attock Fort Complex. The fall of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century saw the rise of Sikhs in Punjab and Durrani Afghans to the western side. Attock became a battleground between two contending powers. British finally ended the feud by subjugating both Sikhs and Afghans in the nineteenth century. British at the same time also brought rail lines to the area, built the first permanent bridge in 1880 over the Indus River. The District was named Campbellpur after the name of Sir Campbell who laid the foundation stone of Campbellpur City in 1908, a few kilometers away on the southeast of Attock Khurd Town. The District was constituted in 1904 by taking Talagang Tehsil from Jhelum District and Pindi Gheb, Fateh Jang, and Attock Tehsils from Rawalpindi District. The city was renamed Attock in 1978.