Kran

Kran was the centre of a medieval Bulgarian region south of the Balkan Mountains, near the Kazanlak valley. Its position linked routes across the mountains with the plains to the south. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the district became an appanage held by members of the Bulgarian ruling families. Among them was the despot Aldimir, a relative of the Terter dynasty, whose lands lay on the empire's contested southern frontier.

Aldimir defended the district against rivals supported by Byzantium, but in 1305 he fell out of favour with Tsar Theodore Svetoslav and lost Kran. The region subsequently passed among other members of the Bulgarian nobility. Scholars have associated a substantial medieval fortress near Kazanlak with the residence of Kran's rulers, though the precise location of the medieval town remains debated. Ottoman expansion later ended the Bulgarian principalities in this part of the Balkans.