Lipljan


Lipljan or Lipjan is a town and municipality located in the Pristina District of Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town of Lipljan has 6,870 inhabitants, while the municipality has 57,605 inhabitants.

Name

According to one theory proposed by Croatian toponomy expert Petar Skok, the name of the town, Lipljan, is derived from the Serbian :wiktionary:lipa#Serbo-Croatian|lipa, "linden tree", referring to the local foliage. The name lipa is often used in South Slavic toponyms. However, a rival theory holds that the town's name derives from Ulpiana, the Dardanian and Roman era settlement it succeeded, possibly due to either a Ul- to Li- shift seen elsewhere in Roman toponyms, or via folk etymology with Slavic lipa.
The Roman city of Ulpiana was located near Lipljan and it was named in honor of the Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus. In the early Middle Ages in was part of the Bulgarian Empire and a diocese of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. The neo-Latin form Lypenion for the city occurs for the first time in a Byzantine text from 1018 AD that confirmed the town as an episcopal seat of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid following the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria in the same year.

History

Roman period

Ulpiana played an important role in the development of the most important cities in the Roman province of Dardania.

Middle Ages

Lipljan was the seat of medieval Eparchy of Lipljan that existed up to the beginning of 18 century. The Gračanica monastery was built in 1321, on the ruins of two older churches.

Demographics

According to the last official census done in 2011, the municipality of Lipljan has 57,605 inhabitants. Based on the population estimates from the Kosovo Agency of Statistics in 2016, the municipality has 57,415 inhabitants.
The ethnic composition of the municipality:

Municipality