Rankali

The Rankali were a Kurdish tribe in the mountains of Hamadan, neighbours of the Kalaliyya. Their chief Jamal al-Din Balan ruled Kangavar and its districts on the road to Kermanshah.

Writing in the 1340s, Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari counted two thousand men under Balan. In the wider region, the Safavids fortified the city of Kermanshah, which the Ottomans occupied in 1723–1729 and 1731–1732; the Qajars later repulsed an Ottoman attack under Fath Ali Shah, who ruled from 1797 to 1834.