Eighteen History Books of Jin


Eighteen History Books of Jin are the history books which were published and used as the history books of the Jin dynasty before the Book of Jin was published.
They consisted of nine Books of Jin and nine Annals of Jin. Many history books about the Jin dynasty began to disappear from the scene after the Tang-era Book of Jin was written in the Zhen'guan era of the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang and they became hard to find come the Song dynasty.
Some of their contents are extant in the form of annotations found in Liu Yiqing's A New Account of the Tales of the World, Pei Songzhi's annotations in Records of the Three Kingdoms, Xiao Tong's book Wen Xuan and Li Fang's book Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era. In particular, Zang Rongxu's Book of Jin and Wang Yin's Book of Jin survived relatively intact to the present day.
As most of them were written during the Jin dynasty itself, it seems that they were incomplete and some of them were only of the Western Jin, though the Book of Jin by Zang Rongxu is thought to be more complete, since it recorded events from the time of Sima Yi, the first regent of Cao Wei from the Sima clan, to the fall of the Eastern Jin due to usurpation by Liu Yu, and it consisted of 110 volumes.
Therefore, Book of Jin of Fang Xuanling is thought to have relied on Zang Rongxu's book.

The Nine Books of Jin (晉書)

Written during the Jin era

Written during the [Liu Song dynasty]

Written during the [Southern Qi] era

  • 110 volumes, authored by Zang Rongxu

Written during the Southern Liang">Liang dynasty">Southern Liang

The Nine Annals of Jin (晉紀)

Written during the Jin era

  • 4 volumes, authored by Lu Ji
  • 20 volumes, authored by Gan Bao
  • 10 volumes, authored by Cao Jiazhi 曹嘉之 『晉紀』 （晉）]
  • 11 volumes, authored by Deng Can
  • 46 volumes, authored by Xu Guang

Written during the Liu Song era

  • 23 volumes, authored by Liu Qianzhi
  • 10 volumes, authored by Wang Shaozhi
  • Authored by Guo Jichan
  • Authored by Pei Songzhi