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Medieval historians/chroniclers

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Ancient historians

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Ban Gu (班固, Wade-Giles Pan Ku; 32-92) war ein chinesischer Historiker aus der Zeit der älteren Han-Dynastie.

Sein Vater Ban Biao war ebenfalls ein bekannter Historiker. Ban Gu führte die Geschichte der frühen Han-Dynastie fort, die heute als Hanshu (漢書, or Das Buch der Han) bekannt ist. Ban Gu's Arbeit am Hanshu wurde allerdings unterbrochen, denn er kam ins Gefängnis, weil seine Familie zu der Kaiserinwitwe Dou hatte. Sein Buch wurde von seiner Schwester Ban Zhao vollendet und wurde zum Vorbild für viele spätere Geschichtswerke über Dynastien.

Ban Zhao (chinesisch 班昭, Pinyin Bān Zhāo) (ca. 35100) lebe zur Zeit der Han-Dynastie und war die erste weibliche chinesische Historikerin. Ban Zhao /Pan Chao /Cao Dagu (c. 45/48-bef. 120 CE)

Ban Zhao (old spelling: Pan Chao) was born in the provinces to a family of scholars that had been involved for three generations with the Chinese emperor's court. Zhao had two elder brothers, twins at least 13 years older than she: Ban Gu, who would become a courtier poet and the major author of Han shu, a history of the first 200 years of Han dynasty China; and Ban Chou, who would become a general, winning important battles on China's northwest frontier.

Zhao's father, a well-known scholar who had begun the Han shu, died when she was about eight years old. She was married when she was 14, had at least one child, was widowed "early," and never remarried.

By 76 CE, Zhao's brother Chou had become a soldier, and her mother and her brother Gu were in the capital, where Gu was attached to the emperor's court as a historian and editor. Zhao, nearly 30, apparently soon joined them (it was unusual that a widow would leave her husband's family). Gu was working on the Han shu; scholars see it as "likely that she [Zhao] was already an active contributor to the project in the 70s & 80s" (Wills, p.94).

In 89, there was a new emperor, a child, so rule fell to his mother, Dowager Empress Dou, and to her family; Ban Gu became closely associated with them. In 92, the Dou family was accused of treason: the men of the family committed suicide; the empress lost her power; and the family's friends, including Gu, were executed. But no action was taken against the other Bans: Chou was a victorious general (and safely far away), Zhao was a mere woman (though her son's assignment to a distant post in about 95 has been seen by some as an exile which she shared).

By 97, however, Zhao had been called back to the capital to complete the history left unfinished at Ban Gu's death. According to a biography of Zhao written in the 400s: "[T]he emperor Ho commanded Ban Zhao to come to the Tuan Kuan Library in order to continue and complete the work..." (cited by Swann, p.40), and to supervise the work of other scholars working at the library. Because the Han shu is an important work to historians of China, the question of how much Zhao contributed to it (substantial writing? editing and polishing?) has been debated---sometimes hotly---for 1900 years. From internal evidence, the translator Nancy Lee Swann believes that Zhao is responsible for about one-fourth of the whole.

Besides working on the Han shu and administrating the imperial library, Zhao also became a teacher to the leading women of the court, particularly a 17-year-old girl, Deng, who had come to court in 96. Zhao taught Deng astronomy and mathematics as well as history and the classics. In 102, the emperor dismissed his current empress and promoted Deng to that role. When he died in 106, he was succeeded by a child who soon died and was followed by another child; through these reigns Dowager Empress Deng was regent. Ban Zhao's influence with the empress was apparently great; a contemporary wrote about one court problem, "At a word from mother Ban the whole family resigned" (cited by Swann, p. 236). We don't know the year of Zhao's death but we know that it was before 120, for the Empress, who died in that year, had gone into mourning for her (rare treatment for a commoner).

After her death, her daughter-in-law collected Zhao's written work, which the biographer of the 400s described as including "Narrative Poems, Commemorative Writings, Inscriptions, Eulogies, Argumentations, Commentaries, Elegies, Essays, Treatises, Expositions, Memorials, and Final Instructions, in all (enough to fill) 16 books" (cited by Swann, p.41). Apparently, Zhao also "annotated" an earlier work, Lienu zhuan [Lives of eminent women, 79-8 BCE]. The extant works whose attribution is sure include one long poem, "Traveling Eastward"; three short poems; two letters to the throne; and the much quoted survival manual, Nujie [Lessons for women]. In the first centuries after Zhao's death, it was her contributions to Han shu, her scholarly writing, and her poetry that were most praised. It wasn't until the 800s that Nujie became the work with which she was identified.

One passage from Zhao's biography is intriguing: "Zhao's younger sister-in-law, Cao Feng-sheng, likewise talented and cultured, wrote essays which are worth reading, in which she took issue with Ban Zhao" (cited in Swann, p.41). What did Zhao's sister-in-law take issue with? Did it have to do with Nujie? Was that too narrow-minded? too broad-minded? Or was the disagreement with one of Zhao's other writings? The sister-in-law's essays are lost.