Shiji

The ''Shiji'' is an official work of Chinese history published in the 1st century BC, and the first entry in the canonical Twenty-Four Histories. Its title is commonly translated as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribes Records''. The ''Shiji'' was written during the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC by the historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty.

The ''Shiji'' has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". After Confucius and Qin Shi Huang, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures." The ''Shiji'' set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historiographical conventions, the ''Shiji'' does not treat history as "a continuous, sweeping narrative", but rather break it up into smaller, overlapping units dealing with famous leaders, individuals, and major topics of significance. Provided by Wikipedia