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The Jie (; Middle Chinese: ) were a historical tribe of North China in the fourth century. They were part of the Five Barbarians during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. Under Shi Le and his family, they established the Later Zhao which dominated northern China from 319 to 351. The Jie ceased to play a role in Chinese history after Ran Min culling order and the wars that followed the collapse of Later Zhao. Some figures from the Northern Dynasties were identified as being descended from the Jie.
According to the Book of Jin, the ancestors of Shi Le were a part of the multi-ethnic Xiongnu tribe known as Qiāngqú (羌渠), although by the 4th-century, Shi Le and his people were classed separate from the Xiongnu as a "miscellaneous hu" (雜胡; záhú) group. Some have linked the names Shi (石) and Jie (羯) to a Sogdian statelet known as 石國 Shíguó (literally, "Stone Country", at Chach Zhěshí 赭時, now Tashkent, also meaning "Stone City" in Common Turkic).
Other sources link the Jie to the Lesser Yuezhi ( Xiao Yuezhi 小月氏), who remained in China as vassals of the Xiongnu and then the Han dynasty.
According to Chen Yong, while Shi Le and his biological family were ethnically Jie, the other recorded "Jie" in history were from a wide array of miscellaneous hu tribes in Bingzhou and Hebei, who only adopted the label during the rise of Shi Le and Later Zhao. Chen asserts that Shi Le, due to the small population of the actual Jie in contrast to the numerous other hu that made up his power base, undertook ethnic policies to unite the assortment of people under a common "Jie" or " guoren" (國人; countryman) identity, which would explain the sudden spike of the Jie population around this time. He also adds that a considerable number of these hu were from the Western Regions, citing the claim of their high noses and full beards, and that there were instances of the Han Chinese becoming part of the Jie.
Others claim that the Jie were an ancient Yeniseian-speaking tribe related to the Ket people, who today live between the Ob River and Yenisei River rivers—the character 羯 ( jié) is pronounced /kiɛt̚/ in Hokkien, /kʰiːt̚/ or /kiːt̚/ in Cantonese, /ciat̚/ in Hakka Chinese and ketsu in Japanese, implying that the ancient pronunciation might have been fairly close to Ket (kʰeˀt). The root may be transliterated as Jié- or Tsze2- and an older form, < kiat, may also be reconstructed. This ethnonym might be cognate with the ethnonyms of Yeniseian-speaking peoples, such as the Ket people and the Kott people (who spoke the extinct Kott language, but their ethnonym is believed to have Buryat origins). Pulleyblank (1962) connected the ethnonym to Proto-Yeniseian * qeˀt/ s (*cew-ç) "stone". Vovin et al. (2016) also pointed to * keˀt (*qid) "person, human being" as another possible source.Vovin et al. "Who were the *Kjet" (羯) and what language did they speak?" Journal Asiatique 304.1 (2016): 125–144 126–127 Alexander Vovin also suggests that the Xiongnu spoke a Yeniseian language, further connecting them with the Jie people.Vovin, Alexander. "Did the Xiongnu speak a Yeniseian language?". Central Asiatic Journal 44/1 (2000), pp. 87–104.
Among the Yeniseian languages, Jie is hypothesized to be Pumpokolic. Vovin, Edward Vajda, and de la Vaissière have suggested that Jie shares the same idiosyncrasies with the Pumpokol language, and the two are therefore closely related. This argument is strengthened by the fact that in northern Mongolia, Yeniseian-derived hydronyms have been demonstrated to be exclusively Pumpokolic, while influence from other Yeniseian languages is only found further north. This therefore lends credence to the theory that the Jie are a Pumpokolic-speaking tribe, and confirms that the Pumpokolic-speaking Yeniseians existed in the core territory of the Xiongnu state.
After attaining his freedom, Shi Le became a bandit and later a rebel leader with his Han Chinese friend, Ji Sang, who gave Shi Le his name. When their rebellion was defeated in 307, Shi Le joined the Xiongnu-led Han-Zhao, where he quickly rose through the ranks and became a key commander in their war against the Western Jin. He was also effectively a powerful warlord who controlled the eastern parts of the empire and made the city of Xingtai his capital. In 319, Shi Le broke away and established the Later Zhao. He conquered his former state in 329, and while some areas remained independent, the Later Zhao became the hegemonic power of northern China, reaching a stalemate with the Eastern Jin and Cheng-Han dynasties in the south.
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 miscellaneous hu tribes. Shi Le's family also had an unusual practice of heavily adopting people into their clan. His brother, Shi Hu, for example 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 well as Shi Kan and Shi Cong, who were Han Chinese. The adopted members were turned into powerful princes and military generals. However, after Shi Le died, Shi Hu violently seized power from his biological son, Shi Hong and ascended the throne in 334.
Shi Hu shifted the capital to Ye and ruled over northern China for roughly 15 years. Records describe him as a brutal tyrant who oppressed the common people through his excessive building projects, concubine collection and military campaigns. By the end of his reign, he was troubled by a succession crisis, and after his death in 349, his family members engaged in an internecine struggle over the throne. During the course of the conflict, Shi Hu's adopted Han Chinese grandson, Ran Min, was promised the role of Crown Prince, but soon took control of the emperor and capital by force after his promise was reneged upon. The Zhao state then split into two parts when 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 tribespeople in Ye. In 349, he ordered the killing of every Jie and hu people, 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 culling order appears to have had an adverse effect on the Jie population. The Buddhist Conquest of China, Erik Zürcher, p. 111 Later that year, Shi Min massacred 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, the final ruler of Later Zhao, Shi Zhi and his family were massacred in Xiangguo, bringing the dynasty to an end. The last member of the Shi clan fled to the Eastern Jin in Jiankang, but was 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.
The Jie practiced cremation, which was notably a custom in the city-state of Tashkent in the Western Regions. Scholars have speculate that the Jie believed in Sogdia Zoroastrianism, stating that there was a temple or altar in Ye called " Hutian" (胡天), which was the Chinese name for the Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda. Due to the veneration of fire in Zoroastrianism, another example they cite is the giant lamp that was built in Shi Hu's palace for his crowning ceremony as Heavenly King.
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