Dardania in Greek mythology is the name of a city founded on Mount Ida by Dardanus from which also the region and the people took their name.

From Dardanus' grandson Tros the people gained the additional name of Trojans and the region gained the additional name Troad. Tros' son Ilus subsequently founded a further city called Ilion (in Latin Ilium) down on the plain, the city now more commonly called Troy and the kingdom was split between Ilium and Dardania.

Harry Thurston Peck, Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquity, 1898 similarly defines Dardania as "a district of the Troad, lying along the Hellespont, southwest of Abydos, and adjacent to the territory of Ilium. Its people (Dardani) appear in the Trojan War, under Aeneas, in close alliance with the Trojans, with whose name their own is often interchanged, especially by the Roman poets."

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Dardania was also a region near the river Morava in modern-day Serbia. It spread over most of today's Kosovo, western Macedonia, and parts of northern Albania. Its native Dardani people were a tribe of mixed Illyrians and Thracians. They seem to have often been a threat to the kingdom of Macedon.

The area was conquered by the Romans in 28 BC and became part of the Roman province of Moesia, on the border with Illyricum. After AD 85 it was part of Moesia Superior. Emperor Diocletian later made Dardania into a special province with its capital at Naissus (Niš).

Today it is considered an ancient term for Kosovo, and there are even proposals to rename the province that way, in order to lay claim to territory in northern Albania and western Macedonia, as mentioned above.

A Boue and von Hahn have indicated that the name Dardania comes from the Albanian word "dardhën, pear". And it has been remarked that in the area pear-trees abound.