Sima Qian

Sima Qian

Sima Qian (c. 145 BC – c. 86 BC) 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. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Sima Qian is the 4th most popular historian (up from 6th in 2019), the 11th most popular biography from China and the most popular Chinese Historian.

Sima Qian is most famous for the Records of the Grand Historian, which is a history of China and the world from the time of the Yellow Emperor to the time of Emperor Wu of Han.