Duke of Shao
the founder of Yan and Zhao States; the first to hold the Taibao position and assisted the young King Cheng of Zhou
Shi, Duke of Shao (died c. 1000 BCE), born Ji Shi, posthumous name Kang (康), also known as Lord Shao or Duke of Shao, was a high-ranking minister of the early Zhou dynasty. He was a member of the royal clan, the founding lineage head of the state of Yan, and elder of the minor polity Shao (召國). After King Wu of Zhou's death, Lord Shao supported the Duke of Zhou in his regency and helped suppress the Rebellion of the Three Guards. He remained a major figure at court for decades.
Royal kin
The earliest biography of Lord Shao, in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, states merely that he was a member of same ancestral temple kinship group as the house of Zhou. Wang Chong's Lunheng calls him the elder brother of the Duke of Zhou. Huangfu Mi states Lord Shao was the son of King Wen of Zhou by a concubine. Modern scholarship has not significantly modified this view. Edward Shaughnessy called Lord Shao half-brother to the Duke of Zhou in a 1989 paper.
The public source identifies “Duke of Shao” as the founder of Yan and Zhao States; the first to hold the Taibao position and assisted the young King Cheng of Zhou. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Duke, Shao and founder.
Why this record matters
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5928108. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1000 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Duke of Shao” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.