The Book of Wei (Chinese: 魏書/魏书; pinyin: Wèishū) is a classic Chinese historical writing compiled by Wei Shou from 551 to 554, and serves as an important historical text describing the Northern Wei and Eastern Wei from 386 to 550.^[1]

In compiling the work, Wei Shou was criticized for showing partiality to ancestors of political allies and intentionally defamatory to or entirely ignoring ancestors of political enemies. Detractors of the work referred to the book as 穢書, (Hui Shu), nearly pronounced as 'Wei Shu', but meaning "Book of Filth". From a modern historical view point, the book had glaring problems, as it took glorification of the Northern Wei to an extreme, intentionally misstating history of her predecessor state Dai, which was a vassal of Western Jin, Later Zhao, Former Yan, and Former Qin, but which the book characterized as a powerful empire that those states were vassals of. It further characterized all other rival states as barbaric and made unsubstantiated accusations against their rulers. Further, it retroactively used the sinicized surnames introduced by Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei in 496 to apply to events long before, making it difficult for readers to know what the actual names of historical personages were. In addition, Wei Shou was criticized in that, as an official of the Eastern Wei and its successor state Northern Qi, he included the sole emperor of Eastern Wei, Emperor Xiaojing, among his imperial lists while intentionally omitting the three emperors from the rival state Western Wei after the division of the Northern Wei in 534. However, he was credited with harmonizing highly confusing and fragmented accounts of historical events from the state of Dai to the early period of Northern Wei and creating coherent accounts of events.

The book contain 114 volumes when written, but by the Song Dynasty some volumes were already missing. Later editors reconstructed those volumes by taking material from the History of the Northern Dynasties dated to the 7th century.

[edit] Footnotes

v • d • e Twenty-Four Histories Records of the Grand Historian (Sima Qian) | Book of Han (Ban Gu) | Book of the Later Han (Fan Ye) | Records of Three Kingdoms (Chen Shou) | Book of Jin (Fang Xuanling et al.) | Book of Song (Shen Yue) | Book of Qi (Xiao Zixian) | Book of Liang (Yao Silian) | Book of Chen (Yao Silian) | Book of Wei (Wei Shou) | Book of Northern Qi (Li Baiyao) | Book of Zhou (Linghu Defen et al.) | Book of Sui (Wei Zheng et al.) | History of Southern Dynasties (Li Yanshou) | History of Northern Dynasties (Li Yanshou) | Book of Tang (Liu Xu et al.) | New Book of Tang (Ouyang Xiu et al.) | Five Dynasties History (Xue Juzheng et al.) | New History of the Five Dynasties (Ouyang Xiu) | History of Song (Toktoghan et al.) | History of Liao (Toktoghan et al.) | History of Jin (Toktoghan et al.) | History of Yuan (Song Lian et al.) | History of Ming (Zhang Tingyu et al.)

Chinese Wikisource has original text related to this article: Canonical Book of the Northern Wei Dynasty (in Chinese)

[edit] See also

• Twenty-Four Histories
• Change of Xianbei names to Han names

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