Kalhor

The Kalhor were a Kurdish tribe in the borderlands between Kermanshah and Khanaqin, with a centre at Gīlān-e Gharb. Their chiefs claimed descent from Gudarz, a hero of the Shahnama.

The tribe remained largely independent until the Safavids rose in the sixteenth century. It then served them against the Ottomans, retaining its own government until Shah Tahmasp I. After the Safavid collapse they regained autonomy and allied with Karim Khan, who married a Kalhor bride. In 1830 the Kalhor and Zangana, led by Kermanshah’s governor Muhammad Husayn Mirza, fought the Bakhtiari under Hisam al-Saltana.