means that Baian placed the right wing of his west front against the Saxons and Franks, and the left wing against the Lombards, under Bulgarian župans, but the centre against the Bavarians, under Avar yopans. How important it was for Baian to settle his western front against the Germans with warlike elements can be seen from the appearance of a second warrior class, that of the Germanic vikings, among the Sorbs on the Saale (vićazi), and among the Serbo-Croatians in Illyria (vitezi). But it is also possible that before the invasion of the Avars this Slav folk dominated by vikings had been subjected by a Bulgarian horde, who set themselves over them as župans, somewhere in their home in Transcarpathia, and were then dismembered by Baian, and transplanted together with his župans and vikings to distant regions.
Before the time of Bulgars and Avars there were still no župans among the Slavs with whom the Byzantines came into contact, but Germanic rīkses, and not till the year 952 is there a statement by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, "These peoples, Croats, Serbs, have no princes (ἄρχοντας) but župans as a kind of elders (ζουπάνους γέροντας) just as the other Slav lands have." In 965 Ibrāhīm ibn Ia'qūb says exactly the same of the "Awbābā" [of Wollin] dwelling on the Baltic at the other end of the Slav world, though he does not actually use the word župan. Among the Alpine Slavs (Slovenes) neighbouring on the Croats in South Styria we also meet with a very numerous župan class in the fifteenth century under which the common peasantry were placed. Among the Servians the "zoupanoi gerontes" mentioned by Constantine were the princes of the individual clans, and one of them made himself grand-župan (archon, archezoupanos, megas zoupanos, magnus comes) of the whole people. Similarly, the independent princes of the Elbe Slavs (not yet subjugated by the Germans) were named by the chroniclers duces, principes, seniores, promiscuously; Ibrāhīm calls them the elders. After the German subjugation the seniores = eldesten = supani of the Elbe Slavs, namely the Sorbs in the modern kingdom of Saxony, were still the highest class of the Slav population, having their possessions in fief, being under feudal law, dispensing justice, and only pledged to serve their lord in war on horseback; thus they came nearer to the German nobility than to the other Slav peasantry. In Mecklenburg, the land of the Obodritzi, the feudal village magistrates — the former župans — were expressly reckoned among the vassals of the country. It cannot therefore be doubted that the župans of the Elbe Slavs also were principes, domini, landlords before their subjugation.
With župan is connected župa (Slav, župa, Lat. suppa), that is the district under a župan, which among the Serbs was a principality, but among the Slovenes of Lower Styria at the time of the German dominion župa denoted only a village district. Here the župans finally dwindled to village-chiefs, and then the word signified their office, officium suppae or the župan estate. The great Servian tribal-župa and the little
