Records of the Grand Historian

A 130-chapter universal history spanning roughly 2,500 years, from the legendary Yellow Emperor to Sima Qian's own time under Emperor Wu of Han, organized into an innovative five-part structure, basic annals of rulers, chronological tables, treatises on institutions such as rites, music, and the calendar, records of the hereditary noble houses, and biographies of individuals from statesmen to assassins to merchants, that became the template for every subsequent official Chinese dynastic history.

The work was begun by Sima Qian's father, Sima Tan, Grand Historian at the Han court, and continued by Sima Qian after he inherited the post. In 99 BC Sima Qian was condemned to death for publicly defending a general who had surrendered to the Xiongnu, and he chose castration over execution specifically so that he could live to complete the history, an episode he narrates in his famous letter to Ren An as the reason the finished work carries the weight it does.

Sima Qian drew on court archives, inscriptions, oral tradition, and his own extensive travels to verify sites and stories, and he repeatedly appends a personal judgment, introduced by the formula 'the Grand Historian remarks,' assessing the moral standing of his subjects. He treats history not as a neutral chronicle but as a tribunal in which the historian's independent judgment, uncorrupted by the ruling court, renders a verdict that outlasts political power, a stance his own biography makes literal: the book itself is the vindication a mutilated, disgraced official could no longer seek any other way.

The Shiji established the annals-biography-treatise format followed by every subsequent official dynastic history for the next two thousand years, including the Han Shu and the Sanguo Zhi, and it is prized as much for its narrative artistry, particularly its biographical sketches of figures like Xiang Yu and the assassin-retainers, as for its historiographical achievement.