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Župa or Żupa (Cyrillic Жупа) is a Slavic term originally denoting various territorial and other subunits, usually a small administrative division, especially a gathering of several villages.
Early Middle Ages
Originally, since nomadic times, the zupa started as an extended family, where authority rested with a pater familias (as that Latin words testifies, so it was originally with the Italic peoples), called zupan (various spellings are used, including zhupan, hugely varied in different languages). In time, some evolved into larger clans, and its origin made a hereditary principle for the succession to the chiefship logical.
The Slavs were tribes at the time of their migration to the south between 5th and 7th centuries. Most župas were organised according to tribes and each tribe had its own chieftain called the župan.
Late Middle Ages
The župas were used in Great Moravia in the 9th and 10th century. When St. Stephen of Hungary organized the Hungarian Kingdom in the 11th century, Magyars adopted the term župan to ispán for the head of their counties.
The Slovaks and the Croats used the terms župa, župan and/or županija for the counties in the Kingdom of Hungary. German language translation of the word for those counties was Komitat (from Latin Comitatus, 'countship') during the Middle Ages, but later it was Gespanschaft (picking up the span root that previously came from župan).
The župas were prominent in the Balkans among the South Slavs throughout the Middle Ages. De Administrando Imperio (10th c. Byzantine text) talks of horion as the territorial units of the Slavs, referring to the župe.
"Grand Župan" župan, is also a Serbian medieval title equivalent to the prince from 11th to early 13th century.
The župan title was also used in Wallachia (in modern Romania).
Modern times
The Croats preserved the term župa until the modern times as the name for local clerical units (parishes) and slightly modified županija as the name for their regional government (the counties of Croatia).
The Slovaks have also preserved the term: it was used as the official name of administrative units of Slovakia within Czechoslovakia in 1918 - 1928 and then again in the Slovak Republic during WWII in 1940-1945. Today it is used semi-officially as an alternative name for the "Autonomous Regions" of Slovakia (whose territory is identical with that of the administrative Regions).
When Slovenia was partitioned between Italy, Hungary, and Germany on 17 April 1941, in the Italian portion, named province of Lubiana, the new administration was lead by an Italian High Commissioner, but there also were Presidents of the Council of Zhupans of Lubiana:
- 27 May 1941 - 1941 Marko Natlachen, the last Ban of Drava (September 1935 - 17 April 1941; b. 1886 - d. 1943)
- 1941 - 7 June 1942 ?
- 7 June 1942 - 20 September 1943 Leon Rupnik (b. 1880 - d. 1946)
See also
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Sources and references
Noble titles | Slavic titles | Slavs | Tribal titles
Župa | Gespanschaft | Župa
"Župa"