Sixteen Kingdoms Most of what is known about the Jie people comes from the
Later Zhao dynasty, one of the
Sixteen Kingdoms that existed in the first half of the 4th-century. The earliest recorded Jie was
Shi Le, a minor chieftain from
Wuxiang County in
Bing province (roughly modern-day
Shanxi) under the Western Jin dynasty. However, his name was not originally "Shi Le", as it does not appear that the Jie had family names; Instead, his original name was either Bei (㔨) or Fule (匐勒). He became chieftain by succeeding his father Zhouhezhu (周曷朱) and grandfather Yeyiyu (耶奕于) before him. When a famine struck Bing in 303, he and many other Jie and Hu people became displaced. The Jin provincial inspector, looking to fund his military for an
ongoing civil war, had them captured and sold into slavery. The Jie and Hu were scattered around the
Hebei and
Shandong regions, with Shi Le himself becoming a slave. After attaining freedom, Shi Le became a bandit and later a rebel leader with his
Han Chinese friend,
Ji Sang, who reportedly gave Shi Le his name. When their rebellion was defeated in 307, Shi Le joined the
Han-Zhao dynasty where he quickly rose through the ranks and became a key commander in their war against the Western Jin. He was effectively an independent warlord over the
Hebei region and made the city of
Xiangguo his capital. In 319, he formally broke away and established the Later Zhao, going on to conquer his former state in 329. While far reaches of the north remained largely independent, the Later Zhao would dominate northern China and maintain a stalemate with the
Eastern Jin dynasty in the south for the next two decades. During his reign, Shi Le issued a ban on the word "Hu", replacing it with the word "guoren" (國人; countryman) when referring to the Jie and other Hu tribes. Shi Le's family also had a peculiar practice of adopting many people into their clan. His brother,
Shi Hu was a distant cousin who was adopted by his father during their tribal years. Shi Le continued this practice during his rise to power, adopting the likes of Shi Hui (石会), previously Zhang Beidu (張㔨督) of a different Hu tribe as an elder brother and Shi Pu (石璞), great-grandson of the prominent Chinese minister,
Shi Bao, as a kinsman. The adopted members were all turned into powerful princes and officials. After Shi Le's death in 333, Shi Hu violently seized power from his son,
Shi Hong and ascended the throne the following year. During his 15-year-long reign, Shi Hu shifted the capital to
Ye and was known in history as a tyrant. He particularly oppressed his Han Chinese subjects through excessive
corvée and conscriptions, but at the same time, promoted the spread of
Buddhism. By the time of his death in 349, he left behind a succession crisis, and his family members engaged in a brutal internecine struggle for the throne. During the course of the conflict, Shi Hu's adopted Chinese grandson,
Shi Min was promised the throne, but he forcibly took control of the emperor and capital after that promise was reneged upon. The Zhao then split into two as
Shi Zhi, a son of Shi Hu, formed a faction against Shi Min in the old capital of Xiangguo. After surviving multiple assassination attempts, Shi Min suspected that he could not trust the Jie and Hu in Ye. In 349, he ordered the killing of every Jie and Hu, identifying them by their high noses and full beards. Shi Min personally led his soldiers to massacre the tribes in Ye while his generals purged their armies of tribesmen. According to some sources, more than 200,000 of them were slain, but a large portion of them were also Han Chinese who were mistaken due to their facial features. Regardless, the killing order appears to have had an adverse effect on the Jie population. Later that year, Shi Min slaughtered the Shi clan in Ye, changed his name to Ran Min and proclaimed himself Emperor of (Ran) Wei. He also reversed the genocide policy to avoid causing more tribesmen to join Shi Zhi's side. In 351, Shi Zhi and his family were also massacred in Xiangguo, bringing the dynasty to an end. The last members of the Shi clan fled to the Eastern Jin in
Jiankang, where they were executed upon his arrival. The remaining Jie people eventually became subjects of the
Xianbei-led
Former Yan, who defeated Ran Min and conquered the
Hebei and
Shandong regions.
Later history Hereafter, the Jie people seemingly faded into obscurity. However, there were several figures in later history who may have been of Jie ethnicity.
Gai Wu, a rebel during the
Northern Wei dynasty, is described in the
Book of Qi as a Jiehu (羯胡), although the
Book of Wei states that he was a
Lushuihu instead. Both
Erzhu Rong and
Hou Jing, two famous warlords of the
Northern Dynasties, were identified as Qihu (契胡) and Jiehu respectively, and modern scholars have suggested that they could have been be related to the Jie. The
Tang dynasty rebel,
An Lushan was also called a Jiehu, and according to the unearthed epitaph of
Shi Chonggui, the Shi clan of
Shatuo origin that ruled the
Later Jin (936–947) claimed that they were descendants of Shi Le. == Religion ==