Župa

Župa (Cyrillic Жупа, pl. Župe) is a Slavic term denoting a small administrative division, usually a gathering of several villages.

The Slavs were tribes at the time of their migration to the south between 5th and 7th centuries. Most župe were organised according to tribes and each tribe had its own chieftain called the župan.

The župe were used in Great Moravia in the 9th and 10th century. When the Magyars arrived in the Pannonian plain in the 9th century, they adopted the term župan to ispán for the head of their counties.

The župan title was also used in Wallachia.

The župe 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.

The Slovaks and the Croats used the terms župa, župan and/or županija for the counties in the Kingdom of Hungary.

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).