Liú Shù 劉恕
Northern Sòng historian and one of Sīmǎ Guāng’s three principal collaborators on the Zī zhì tōng jiàn. Zì Dàoyuán 道原. Ancestrally of Wànnián 萬年 in Jīngzhào 京兆 (Cháng’ān region); his grandfather Liú Shòu 劉受 was magistrate of Línchuān 臨川 and was buried at Gāoān 高安 (modern Jiāngxī), where the family settled. Lifedates 1032–1078 (CBDB id 20419 confirmed).
Jìnshì of Huángyòu 1 / 1049 (passed in the gāoděng “high” pass-list) at age 18 — a néngtóng 神童 (“divine child”) class of pass. First appointed Jùlù zhǔbù 鉅鹿主簿; rose to magistracies at Hézhōu 和州 and Wēngyuán 翁源. When Sīmǎ Guāng received the imperial commission to compile the Tōng jiàn (1066), he memorialized to have Liú Shù seconded as a co-compiler; Liú Shù was promoted to Zhùzuò láng 著作郎.
In Xīníng 4 / 1071, having opposed Wáng Ānshí’s xīn fǎ in close concert with Sīmǎ Guāng, Liú Shù requested a zhōngyǎng 終養 leave (final care for an aged parent) and was reassigned to Mìshū chéng 祕書丞 with permission to continue the Tōng jiàn drafts at home. He drafted the cháng biān for the Three Kingdoms through the Northern and Southern Dynasties — the most fragmentary and difficult portion of the source-base — and it is largely on his foundation that this section of the Tōng jiàn rests.
Late in life he suffered a paralytic stroke and lost the use of his right side. Knowing he could not now obtain the Sòng-dynastic state-archives needed for a planned Hòu jì of the Sòng founders, he abandoned that project and dictated to his son Liú Yìzhòng 劉羲仲 the Zī zhì tōng jiàn wài jì 資治通鑑外紀 (KR2b0015) — the outer chronicle covering the period before the Tōng jiàn’s opening date of 403 BCE, going back to legendary antiquity (Bāoxī / Fúxī). He died shortly after its completion in Yuánfēng 1 / 1078, aged 47. Sīmǎ Guāng wrote the preface to the Wài jì mourning him.
Also author of the Lì nián biǎo 歷年表 (a yearly synoptic table of universal history, transmitted via the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn) and the Shíguó jì nián 十國紀年 (history of the Five-Dynasties Ten States, lost). His son Liú Yìzhòng was a notable late-Northern-Sòng historian in his own right. Biographies in Sòng shǐ 444. CBDB id 20419.