Twenty-Four Histories

The Shiji (simplified Chinese: 史记; traditional Chinese: 史記; pinyin: Shǐjì; lit. 'Historical Records'), also known as Records of the Grand Historian or The Grand Scribe's Records (simplified Chinese: 太史公书; traditional Chinese: 太史公書; pinyin: Tàishǐgōng shū), is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, building upon work begun by his father Sima Tan. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty.

The Shiji has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". Following Confucius and Qin Shi Huang, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China; by providing definitive biographies, he effectively shaped the enduring images of these two earlier figures." The Shiji set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historiographical conventions, the Shiji does not treat history as "a continuous, sweeping narrative", but rather breaks it up into smaller, overlapping units dealing with famous leaders, individuals, and major topics of significance.

Ethiopian historiography includes the ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern disciplines of recording the history of Ethiopia, including both native and foreign sources. The roots of Ethiopian historical writing can be traced back to the ancient Kingdom of Aksum (c. AD 100 – c. 940). These early texts were written in either the Ethiopian Ge'ez script or the Greek alphabet, and included a variety of mediums such as manuscripts and epigraphic inscriptions on monumental stelae and obelisks documenting contemporary events. The writing of history became an established genre in Ethiopian literature during the early Solomonic dynasty (1270–1974). In this period, written histories were usually in the form of royal biographies and dynastic chronicles, supplemented by hagiographic literature and universal histories in the form of annals. Christian mythology became a linchpin of medieval Ethiopian historiography due to works such as the Orthodox Kebra Nagast. This reinforced the genealogical traditions of Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty rulers, which asserted that they were descendants of Solomon, the legendary King of Israel.

Ethiopian historiographic literature has been traditionally dominated by Christian theology and the chronology of the Bible. There was also considerable influence from Muslim, pagan and foreign elements from within the Horn of Africa and beyond. Diplomatic ties with Christendom were established in the Roman era under Ethiopia's first Christian king, Ezana of Axum, in the 4th century AD, and were renewed in the Late Middle Ages with embassies traveling to and from medieval Europe. Building on the legacy of ancient Greek and Roman historical writings about Ethiopia, medieval European chroniclers made attempts to describe Ethiopia, its people, and religious faith in connection to the mythical Prester John, who was viewed as a potential ally against Islamic powers. Ethiopian history and its peoples were also mentioned in works of medieval Islamic historiography and even Chinese encyclopedias, travel literature, and official histories.

Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" (Chinese: 皇帝; pinyin: Huángdì) was the superlative title held by the monarchs of imperial China's various dynasties. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the "Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandate to rule all under Heaven. Emperors were worshiped posthumously under a secular imperial cult. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty, and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The emperor of China was an absolute monarch, though in the late Qing reforms plans were made to move the emperor to a constitutional monarch.

During the Han dynasty, Confucianism gained sanction as the official political theory. The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. In practice, emperors sometimes avoided the strict rules of succession and dynasties' purported "failures" were detailed in official histories written by their successful replacements or even later dynasties. The power of the emperor was also limited by the imperial bureaucracy, which was staffed by scholar-officials, and eunuchs during some dynasties. An emperor was also constrained by filial obligations to his ancestors' policies and dynastic traditions, such as those first detailed in the Ming-era Huang-Ming Zuxun (Ancestral Instructions).

The Book of Han (Chinese: 漢書), finished in 111 CE, is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), an Eastern Han court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modelled their work on the Records of the Grand Historian (c. 91 BCE), a cross-dynastic general history, but theirs was the first in this annals-biography form to cover a single dynasty. It is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics such as literature in this period. The Book of Han is also called the Book of the Former Han (前漢書; Qián Hàn shū) to distinguish it from the Book of the Later Han (後漢書; Hòu Hàn shū) which covers the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE), and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye (398–445 CE).

Funan (Chinese: 扶南; pinyin: Fúnán, also Chinese: 夫南; Vietnamese: Phù Nam; Khmer: ហ៊្វូណន, romanized: Hvunân, Khmer pronunciation: [fuːnɑːn]; Sanskrit: व्याधपूर, Vyādhapūra) was a loose network of ancient Indianized states (Mandala) located in Mainland Southeast Asia, covering parts of present-day Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, that existed from the first to seventh century CE. The name is found in Chinese historical texts describing the kingdom, and the most extensive descriptions a name the people of Funan gave to their polity, perhaps a Chinese transcription of pnom, “mountain”. Funan is generally considered as the first known kingdom in Southeast Asia. Some scholars argued that ancient Chinese scholars have found the records formerly the Kingdom of Funan, were located to the South-west of Linyi (Champa Kingdom in central Vietnam).

Like the name of the kingdom, the ethno-linguistic nature of the people is the subject of much discussion among specialists. The leading hypotheses are that the Funanese were mostly Mon–Khmer, or that they were mostly Austronesian, or that they constituted a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic society. The available evidence is inconclusive on this issue. Michael Vickery has said that, even though identification of the language of Funan is not possible, the evidence suggests that the population was Khmer. However, several studies demonstrates that inhabitants of Funan probably spoke Malayo-Polynesian languages, as in neighboring Champa. The results of archaeology at Óc Eo have demonstrated "no true discontinuity between Óc Eo and pre-Angkorian levels", indicating ancient Mon-khmer region may have gone as far back as the 4th century BCE. Though regarded by Chinese authors as a single unified polity, some modern scholars suspect that Funan may have been a collection of city-states that sometimes were at war with one another and at other times constituted a political unity. From archaeological evidence, which includes Roman, Chinese, and Indian goods excavated at the ancient mercantile centre of Óc Eo in southern Vietnam, it is known that Funan must have been a powerful trading state. Excavations at Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia have likewise delivered evidence of an important settlement. Since Óc Eo was linked to a port on the coast and to Angkor Borei by a system of canals, it is possible that all of these locations together constituted the heartland of Funan.