DELĪKĀNLŪ, tribe of the Ḵalḵāl region in eastern Persian Azarbaijan. In spite of its Turkish name (deli “young, wild, frolicsome”; Doerfer, Elemente II, pp. 660-62), the tribe is apparently of Kurdish origin, like its neighbors the Šaṭrānlū and Qolūqjānlū tribes; Moḥammad Mardūḵ includes it in his list of Kurdish tribes (I, p. 190). Although most of the Delīkānlū are now Turkophone, as recently as 1330 Š./1951 Kurdish was still spoken at Āqbāš (Razmarā, Farhang IV, p. 26, s.v.), one of the Delīkānlū villages (Oberling, p. 54).

The Delīkānlūs occupy about twenty villages in the dehestāns of Garm, Ganjgāh, Kīvī, and Ḵoreš Rostam (Oberling, p. 54). In 1311 Š./1932 Maḥmūd Kayhān (Joḡrāfīā II, p. 108) estimated their number at 400 households, in 1339 Š./1960 the Persian high command at 480 households (Oberling, p. 53) and M. J. Maškūr (p. 184) at 400 households, and in 1352 Š./1973 Mardūḵ (I, p. 90) at 200 households.