khanly

In a sense, minimal segments present too small and undifferentiated a social field for khanly leadership, and the maximal segments encompass too much play for a single coherent game. So it is in the intermediate range that khanly leadership finds its arena, where khans endeavour to mediate or connect the more abstract qoum to the more concrete groupings by bringing various of them together.

2012, Richard Tapper, Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan, page 134