Concept

Jie people

Summary
The Jié (; Middle Chinese: [ki̯at]) were members of a tribe of northern China in the fourth century. During the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, they were regarded by the Han people as one of the Five Barbarians. Under Shi Le, they established the Later Zhao dynasty. The Jie were defeated by Ran Min in the Wei–Jie war in 350 following the fall of the Later Zhao. Chinese historians continued to document the Jie people and their activities after the Wei–Jie war. There are widely differing accounts of the exact ethnic origins of the Jie, with one theory uncertainly suggesting that they spoke a Yeniseian language, while other authors have proposed a Turkic language. According to the Book of Wei (6th century AD), the name Jie was derived from the Jiéshì area (羯室, modern Yushe County in Shanxi province), where the Jie resided. 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). Edwin Pulleyblank believes the Qiangqu represent the Kangju state of Sogdia. Although Pulleyblank suggested that they might have been Tocharian in origin, most scholars believe that Kangju was constituted by an Eastern Iranian people. 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). Also, An Lushan, a Tang rebel general, had a Sogdian stepfather and was called a Jiehu. The name of the parent house of Turko-Mongol Barlas and Borjigin clans (house of Genghis Khan and Timur) was Kiyat, almost identical to the Middle Chinese pronunciation of the name Jie, /ki̯at/. Others claim that the Jie were an ancient Yeniseian-speaking tribe related to the Ket people, who today live between the Ob and Yenisey rivers—the character 羯 (jié) is pronounced /kiɛt̚/ in Hokkien, /khiːt̚/ or /kiːt̚/ in Cantonese, /ciat̚/ in Hakka and ketsu in Japanese, implying that the ancient pronunciation might have been fairly close to Ket (khet).
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