Sima Qian
145 BCE – 86 BCE
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.
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Born · 145 BCE
227 BCEJing Ke Attempts To Assassinate The King Of QinJing Ke (died 227 BC) was a youxia during the late Warring States period of Ancient China. As a retainer of Crown Prince Dan of the Yan state, Jing Ke was infamous for his failed assassination attempt on King Zheng of the Qin state, who later became Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty and the first unified sovereign in Chinese history. Jing Ke's story is told in the chapter titled Biographies of Assassins (刺客列傳) in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.
213 BCEQin Book Burning OrderThe burning of books and burying of scholars was the purported burning of texts in 213 BCE and live burial of 460 Confucian scholars in 212 BCE ordered by Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. The events were alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought, with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism.
Modern historians doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later in the Han dynasty official Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.
104 BCESima Qian Writes ShijiSima 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.
Died · 86 BCE
Connected figures · 2
Qin Shi Huang
Jing Ke