The Han dynasty historian who wrote the Records of the Grand Historian was Sima Qian. The work is known in Chinese as the Shiji and is also translated as Historical Records or The Grand Scribe’s Records. It presents a sweeping history from the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, covering roughly 2,500 years of Chinese history.
Sima Qian inherited the project from his father, Sima Tan, who had served as Grand Historian at the Han court. He organized the Shiji into 130 chapters and more than 500,000 characters, combining imperial annals, chronological tables, treatises, hereditary histories, and biographies. This structure became a model for later official dynastic histories.
Sima’s career was marked by the Li Ling affair. After defending the general Li Ling, who had surrendered to the Xiongnu, Sima was sentenced to death. He accepted castration instead so he could complete his historical work. Ban Gu later wrote the Book of Han, but he was not the author of the Records of the Grand Historian.