The "Lissa" settlement is documented in 1329. It may have been a founding of the Silesian Duke Henry I of Jawor, heir of the Upper Lusatian Kwisa District by his mother Beatrice of Brandenburg. Upon Henry's death in 1346, the Kwisa lands reverted to the Bohemian Crown, whereafter the lordship was enfeoffed to local noble dynasties. A first town layout was abandoned in 1434 upon devastations by the Hussite Wars, a flood and a fire, and rebuilt at its present location further south on the route from Frýdlant to Lubań. A centre of cloth manufacturing, it received market rights in 1515.