Ban () was a noble title used in several states in Central and Southeastern Europe between the 7th century and the 20th century. The most common examples have been found in Croatia. Sources The first known mention of the title ban is in the 10th century by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, in the work De Administrando Imperio, in the 30th and 31st chapter "Story of the province of Dalmatia" and "Of the Croats and of the country they now dwell in", dedicated to the Croats and the Croatian organisation of their medieval state. In the 30th chapter, describing in Byzantine Greek, how the Croatian state was divided into eleven (; župas), the ban (), (rules over) (Krbava), (Lika) (and) (Gacka). In the 31st chapter, describing the military and naval force of Croatia, "Miroslav, who ruled for four years, was killed by the () (, i.e. Pribina)", and after that followed a temporary decrease in the military force of the Croatian Kingdom. In 1029, a Latin charter was published by Jelena, sister of ban Godemir, in Obrovac, for donation to the monastery of St. Krševan in Zadar. In it she is introduced as "...". Franjo Rački noted that if it is not an original, then it is certainly a transcript from the same 11th century. In the 12th century, the title was mentioned by an anonymous monk of Dioclea and in the Supetar Cartulary. The Byzantine Greek historian John Kinnamos wrote the title in the Greek form (). In the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, which is dated to 12th and 13th century, in the Latin redaction is written as , , , and in the Croatian redaction only as . The Supetar Cartulary includes information until the 12th century, but the specific writing about bans is dated to the late 13th and early 14th century, a transcript of an older document. It mentions that there existed seven bans and they were elected by the six of twelve Croatian noble tribes, where the title is written as banus and bani. Etymology The Late Proto-Slavic word is considered to not be of native Slavic lexical stock and is generally argued to be a borrowing from a Turkic language, but such a derivation is highly criticized by the modern historians who rather argue Western European origin. The title's origin among medieval Croats is not completely understood, and as much is hard to determine