Unknown Archon
The term Unnamed Prince of Serbia ( / "neimenovani srpski arhont"), or the Unknown Prince ( / "nepoznati knez"), refers to the Serbian prince from the first half of the 7th century, who according to the "De Administrando Imperio" (10th century CE) supposedly led his people from their original homeland in White Serbia, to settle in the Balkans during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610–641), as mentioned in Emperor Constantine VII's work "De Administrando Imperio" (written in 950s). The work does not record his name, but states that he was the progenitor of the first Serbian dynasty (known in historiography  as the Vlastimirović dynasty), and that he died before the arrival of the Bulgars (680), succeeded by his son, and then grandson. Studies. According to the accounts in DAI the first Christianization of the Serbs should be dated to 632–638; this could be interpreted at first glance as Porphyrogenitus' invention, or might have actually taken place, encompassing a limited group of chiefs and then very poorly received by the wider layers of the tribe. In early historical assessment like that of German historian Ludwig Albrecht Gebhardi (1735–1802), the Serb archon was a son of Dervan, who was the Duke ("dux ) of the Surbi", east of the Saale. This theory was supported by Miloš Milojević (1872), while Romilly Jenkins (1962) and Relja Novaković (1977) argued the possibility that they were brothers or other relatives. In contemporary historiography and archaeology, the narratives of "De Administrando Imperio" have been reassessed as they contain anachronisms and factual mistakes. The account in "DAI" about the Serbs mentions that they requested from the Byzantine commander of present-day Belgrade to settle in the theme of Thessalonica, which was formed ca. 150 years after the reign of Heraclius which was in the 7th century. For the purposes  of its narrative, the DAI formulates a mistaken etymology of the Serbian ethnonym which it derives from Latin "servi" (serfs). As the Byzantine Empire sought to establish its hegemony towards the Serbs, the narrative of the "DAI" sought to establish a historical hegemony over the Serbs by claiming that their arrival, settlement and conversion to Christianity was the direct result of the Byzantine interference in the centuries which preceded the writing of "DAI". D. Dzino (2010) considers that the story of the migration from White Serbia after the invitation of Heraclius as a means of explanation of the settlement of  the Serbs is a form of rationalization of the social and cultural change which the Balkans had undergone via the misinterpretation of historical events placed in late antiquity.