Records of the Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji, is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The Records was written in the late 2nd century BC to early 1st century BC by the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. 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.