Župan is a noble and administrative title used in several states in Central and Southeastern Europe between the 7th century and the 21st century. It was (and in Croatia still is) the leader of the administrative unit župa (or zhupa, županija). The term in turn was adopted by the Hungarians as ispán and spread further. Origin of the title The exact origin of the title is not definitively known and there have been several hypotheses: Slavic (Franz Miklosich), Turkic-Avarian (A. Bruckner), Iranian (F. Altheim), Proto Indo-European (V. Machek), Indo-European (D. Dragojević), Illyrian-Thracian (K. Oštir), Old-Balkan (M. Budimir), among others. The title was preserved primarily among the Slavic peoples and their neighbours who were under their influence. Its presence among Pannonian Avars and Avar language is completely undetermined. The title origin is not necessarily related to the origin of the titleholder. In 2009, A. Alemany considered that the title *ču(b)-pān, often in a northeastern Iranian milleu, had an Eastern and Central Asian derivation, čupan, and a Western and European derivation, župan. The Eastern čupan first occurs, but allegedly as is usually connected with čupan, in a Bactrian contract dated to 588 AD, where are mentioned two "headman" (σωπανο, "sopano"); among the Western Turks (582–657), the leader of the fifth Shunishi Duolu tribe was a chuban chuo (čupan čor), while the leader of the fifth Geshu Nushibi tribe was chuban sijin (čupan irkin), with chuo and sijin being the standard title of the each tribe's leader, inferior to qayan (khagan), but superior to bäg. However, there is no mention of čupan in Old Turkic runic incsriptions; a Chinese document (c. 8th century) near Kucha mentions several persons (allegedly Tocharians) with patronymic Bai and title chuban; in the same century, in the Chinese documents of province Khotan are mentioned word chiban and alleged title of low rank chaupam; the first (Old) Turkic document recording the title čupan is a Uyghur decree from Turpan dated c. 9th–11th century. According to the work Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk by the 11th century scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, a čupan is an assistant to a village headman. The first known mention of Western župan occurs in a charter of Kremsmünster abbey, by Bavarian duke Tassilo III in 777 AD, in which the monastery was granted by a group of Slavs, headed by the chieftains Taliup and Sparuna, whose abode lied beneath the boundaries reported under oath by the iopan Physso;