Sima Qian

Also known as Father of History, Sima Chin, Ssu-ma Chien, Zichang, Sze-ma Ts'ien, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Sze-ma Tsien, Se-ma-tsien

2nd-century BCE Chinese historian and writer

AI overview

Sima Qian was a Chinese historian and writer from the 2nd century BCE who is best known for compiling one of the most important historical records of ancient China. His work established a foundational model for how Chinese history would be documented and studied for centuries to come.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Family name: Sima
Gender: male
Citizenship: Western Han
Place of birth: Hejin
Place of death: China
Father: Sima Tan
Occupation: astronomer
Languages spoken: Chinese
Native language: Chinese
Notable work: Records of the Grand Historian
Field of work: history of China
Image: Si maqian.jpg

Show 13 more facts

name in native language: 司馬遷
Commons category: Sima Qian
Commons gallery: 司馬遷
date of birth: 0145-00-00
date of death: 0086-00-00
courtesy name: 子長
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
described by source: Book of Han
ethnic group: Han Chinese people
writing language: Chinese
name in kana: しばせん
subject has role: eunuch
Commons Creator page: Sima Qian

Sources (6)

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Encyclopedic overview

Courtesy name Traditional Chinese子長 Simplified Chinese子长

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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sima Qian” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.