Sima Qian

Sima Qian () was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for the ''Shiji'' (sometimes translated into English as ''Records of the Grand Historian''), a general history of China covering more than two thousand years from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and formation of the first Chinese polity to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, during which Sima wrote. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the ''Shiji'' served as a model for official histories for subsequent dynasties across the Sinosphere until the 20th century.

Sima Qian's father, Sima Tan, first conceived of the ambitious project of writing a complete history of China, but had completed only some preparatory sketches at the time of his death. After inheriting his father's position as court historian in the imperial court, he was determined to fulfill his father's dying wish of composing and putting together this epic work of history. However, in 99 BC, he would fall victim to the Li Ling affair for speaking out in defense of the general, who was blamed for an unsuccessful campaign against the Xiongnu. Given the choice of being executed or castrated, he chose the latter in order to finish his historical work. Although he is universally remembered for the ''Records'', surviving works indicate that he was also a gifted poet and prose writer, and he was instrumental in the creation of the ''Taichu'' calendar, which was officially promulgated in 104 BC.

Sima was acutely aware of the importance of his work to posterity and its relationship to his own personal suffering. In the postface of the ''Records'', he implicitly compared his universal history of China to the classics of his day, the ''Guoyu'' by Zuo Qiuming, "Li Sao" by Qu Yuan, and the ''Art of War'' by Sun Bin, pointing out that their authors all suffered great personal misfortunes before their lasting monumental works could come to fruition. Sima Qian is also depicted in the ''Wu Shuang Pu'' by Jin Guliang. Provided by Wikipedia