Early Life
Shi Le was born in 274—but was not named Shi Le, and certainly not with the family name Shi, as it appeared that the Jie did not use family names at the time. (His likely original name is not available in Unicode and therefore is unavailable online; one other possible original name was Fule (匐勒).) His grandfather, named Yeyiyu (耶奕于), and his father, named Zhouhezhu (周曷朱), were minor Jie chiefs, and their tribe traditionally lived in Bing Province (并州, modern Shanxi). Shi grew up in Wuxiang (武鄉, in modern Jinzhong, Shanxi).
In 303 or 304, Bing Province suffered a major famine, and the Jie tribes were seriously affected. Shi Le's tribe spread out and became refugees. Shi and many other Jie and Xiongnu men were captured by Jin officials and sold as slaves. Eventually, he was sold to a man named Shi Huan (師懽), but Shi Huan freed him after becoming impressed with his talents. Eventually, he became a leader of bandits, and at one point he befriended one of Sima Ying the Prince of Chengdu's military commanders, Ji Sang (汲桑). Sima Ying was then stationed at Yecheng and was the most powerful of the Jin imperial princes.
After Sima Ying briefly served as crown prince in 304, he was forced to flee with his brother Emperor Hui to the capital Luoyang and was deposed by Sima Yong the Prince of Hejian. Many of his subordinates, including Ji and Gongsun Fan (公孫藩), deserted, and Gongsun eventually started a rebellion with the stated goal of restoring Sima Ying. Ji and Shi both joined the rebellion—and it was only at that time that Ji gave his friend the family name "Shi" and personal name "Le." After Gongsun was subsequently defeated and killed, Ji became leader of the rebellion and made Shi his key general—now with the goal of avenging Sima Ying, who was forced to commit suicide in 306. However, their rebellion, while briefly successful in capturing Yecheng in 307 and killing Sima Teng (司馬騰) the Prince of Xincai, ultimately was defeated in the winter of that year, and Shi instead joined Liu Yuan, an ethnically Xiongnu former Sima Ying subordinate who had by now declared independence from Jin and established his own state Han Zhao. Liu Yuan made him a general.
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