Sima Qian (c. 145–c. 86 BC) was a historian and writer of the Western Han dynasty who authored Records of the Grand Historian, China's first comprehensive biographical history. After his father Sima Tan, the Grand Historian, died with his life's work unfinished, Sima Qian inherited the post and vowed to complete the chronicle. When he was castrated for defending a disgraced general, he chose to endure the ultimate humiliation rather than die, in order to finish his masterwork.
Records of the Grand Historian covers over three thousand years of Chinese history from the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu in 130 chapters, establishing the biographical format that became standard for all subsequent Chinese dynastic histories. Sima Qian's principle of recording truth without flattery—placing the failed hero Xiang Yu among emperors and the peasant rebel Chen She among nobles—broke with convention and established a humanistic approach to history. Lu Xun called it 'the swan song of historians and the Li Sao without rhyme.'
