For long the history of what later became the Bosnian kingdom is indistinguishable from that of the rest of the Serbs. The whole Illyrian triangle was divided into a great number of small independent districts, somewhat answering to the Teutonic ‘_Gaus_,’ called Župy. Župa means ‘bond’[4] or confederation, and each Župa was simply a confederation of village communities, whose union was represented by a magistrate or governor, called a Župan. The Župans in turn seem to have chosen a Grand-Župan, who may be looked on as the President of the Serbian Federation. We know little about the early Županships of the Bosnian area, but a few of the petty commonwealths of the Serbian coastland, and what later on became the Herzegovina, are mentioned by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who wrote about 950, and the names and situation of some in the Bosnian interior may be gathered from ecclesiastical diplomas. Here and there we read of a ‘Ban’ (translated, in Diocleas, by the Latin word ‘_Dux_’), who was rather higher than an ordinary Župan. These Serbian ‘Archons,’ as the Byzantine historians speak of them, acknowledged the suzerainty of the Eastern Empire, and even, in some cases (though doubtless to a less extent than the Croats), accepted Byzantine dignities. Thus a Ban of Zachlumia accepted the titles of Proconsul and Patrician. Later on, when Czar Simeon erected the new Bulgarian Empire, Serbia was forced for a while to bow to the dominion of the conqueror of Leo Phocas. In the tenth century the Serbs shake off the Bulgarian yoke, and we now begin to hear of four Grand-Župans, whose jurisdictions answer to Serbia proper, Rascia, Dioclea, and Bosnia. The power of the lesser Župans was during this period being diminished for the benefit of these greater potentates, who in Bosnia are generally known as Bans. ‘The Bans,’ says the contemporary Serbian historian,[5] ‘ruled each of them in his own province, and subjugated the Župans, receiving from them the taxes which beforetime had been paid to the King,’ _i.e._ the sole Grand-Župan.