Old History of the Five Dynasties

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The Old History of the Five Dynasties (Chinese: 舊五代史; pinyin: Jiù Wǔdài Shǐ) was an official history mainly focusing on Five Dynasties era (907–960), which controlled much of northern China. And it also includes some history of other south states during the era. It was compiled by the Song dynasty official-scholar Xue Juzheng in the first two decades of the Song dynasty, which was founded in 960. It is one of the Twenty-Four Histories recognized through Chinese history.

The book comprises 150 chapters, and was in effect divided into 7 books, they are: Book of Liang (24 volume), Book of Tang (50 volume), Book of Jin (24 volume), Book of Han (11 volume), Book of Zhou (22 volume), Liezhuan (7 volume) and Zhi (12 volume), respectively. After the New History of the Five Dynasties by Ouyang Xiu was published, it was no longer popular. In the 12th century it was removed from the Imperial Library and was no longer published by order of the Jin dynasty. The book was lost during this period.^[1]

During the 18th century, Qing dynasty scholars found many complete quotes of the book in Yongle Da Dian. They extracted them and together with other sources of the same period, they were able to largely reconstruct the book, although missing a few chapters. Despite rumours that copies of the original book exist, none have been found.