Book of Southern Qi (Complete Three Volumes)

Author: Xiao Zixian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: The Book of the Southern Qi records the history of the Southern Qi Dynasty from the first year of Emperor Gao's reign (479) to the second year of Emperor He's restoration (502), covering a total of 23 years. It is the earliest extant dynastic history in the annals of the Southern Qi. Originally titled The Book of Qi, it was renamed The Book of the Southern Qi during the Song Dynasty to distinguish it from The Book of the Northern Qi by Li Baiyao. The author was Xiao Zixian.
Xiao Zixian, styled Jingyang, was a historian and litterateur of the Southern Dynasties. Born into the imperial family, Xiao Zixian was erudite and knowledgeable, skilled in writing. As a nobleman who moved from the Qi Dynasty to the Liang Dynasty, he was familiar with or had personally experienced many historical events and royal affairs of the Southern Qi. Additionally, the Liang Dynasty replaced the Qi without major wars, allowing many books and documents to be preserved, which provided favorable conditions for Xiao Zixian to compile his historical works.
The Book of the Southern Qi survives in 59 volumes, including 8 imperial chronicles, 11 treatises, and 40 biographies. The missing volume is the Preface. The text is concise, the writing is fluent, and the narrative is comprehensive. In the biographies, Xiao Zixian inherited the method of parallel narration from The Book of Han by Ban Gu and drew inspiration from the method of sequential narration in The Book of the Southern Song by Shen Yue. This allowed him to include multiple figures in a single biography, avoiding the flaw of having separate biographies for each individual, which would have been cumbersome. Furthermore, most of the treatises and classified biographies in the book are preceded by prefaces, which summarize the content and highlight the main purpose of the writing.