[2] After Confucius and Qin Shi Huang, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures.

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.

Sima Tan drafted plans for the ambitious work and left behind some fragments and notes that may have been incorporated into the final text.

[13] Only two fragments of pre-Tang dynasty Shiji manuscripts have survived to the present, and both are held by the Ishiyama-dera temple in Ōtsu, Japan.

Endymion Wilkinson calculates that there were probably between 466 and 700 bundles, whose total weight would have been 88–132 pounds (40–60 kg), which would have been difficult to access and hard to transport.

[17] They show reigns, important events, and royal lineages in table form, which Sima Qian stated that he did because "the chronologies are difficult to follow when different genealogical lines exist at the same time.

[17] The "Treatises" (shū 書, sometimes called "Monographs") is the shortest of the five Shiji sections, and contains eight chapters (23–30) on the historical evolution of ritual, music, pitch pipes, the calendar, astronomy, sacrifices, rivers and waterways, and financial administration.

[17] The 69 "Biographies" chapters mostly contain biographical profiles of about 130 outstanding ancient Chinese men, ranging from the moral paragon Boyi from the end of the Shang dynasty to some of Sima Qian's near contemporaries.

[17] Unlike subsequent official historical texts that adopted Confucian doctrine, proclaimed the divine rights of the emperors, and degraded any failed claimant to the throne, Sima Qian's more liberal and objective prose has been renowned and followed by poets and novelists.

For instance, the material on Jing Ke's attempt at assassinating the King of Qin incorporates an eye-witness account by Xia Wuju (夏無且), a physician to the king of Qin who happened to be attending the diplomatic ceremony for Jing Ke, and this account was passed on to Sima Qian by those who knew Xia.

He is also careful to balance the negative with the positive, for example, in the biography of Empress Dowager Lu which contains startling accounts of her cruelty, he points out at the end that, despite whatever her personal life may have been, her rule brought peace and prosperity to the country.

Sima Qian was a methodical, skeptical historian who had access to ancient books, written on bamboo and wooden slips, from before the time of the Han dynasty.

I myself have travelled west as far as Kongtong, north past Zhuolu, east to the sea, and in the south I have sailed the Yangtze and Huai Rivers.

In the 62nd chapter, "Biography of Guan and of Yan", he writes, "I have read Guan's Mu Min (牧民 - "Government of the People", a chapter in the Guanzi), Shan Gao ("The Mountains Are High"), Chengma (chariot and horses; a long section on war and economics), Qingzhong (Light and Heavy; i.e. "what is important"), and Jiufu (Nine Houses), as well as the Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi."

Sima Qian began the Shiji with an account of the five rulers of supreme virtue, the Five Emperors, who modern scholars, such as those from the Doubting Antiquity School, believe to be originally local deities of the peoples of ancient China.

[25] Sima Qian sifted out elements of the supernatural and fantastic which seemed to contradict their existence as actual human monarchs, and was therefore criticized for turning myths and folklore into sober history.

One may judge of the astonishment of many, therefore, when it appeared that no less than twenty-three of the thirty rulers' names were to be clearly found on the indisputably genuine Anyang bones.

The Shiji was finally disseminated during the reign of Emperor Xuan by Sima Qian's grandson (through his daughter), Yang Yun (楊惲), after a hiatus of around twenty years.

91 BC is established in the Letter to Ren An (報任安書), composed in the Zhenghe (征和) era of Emperor Wu's reign.

The historian Liu Zhiji reported the names of a total of fifteen scholars supposed to have added material to the Shiji during the period after the death of Sima Qian.

[30] The earliest extant copy of the Shiji, handwritten, was made during the Southern and Northern Dynasties period (420–589 AD).

The earliest printed edition, called Shiji jijie (史記集解, literally Scribal Records, Collected Annotations), was published during the Northern Song dynasty.

Huang Shanfu's edition, printed under the Southern Song dynasty, is the earliest collection of the Sanjiazhu commentaries on the Shiji (三家注, literally: The Combined Annotations of the Three Experts).