Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu is the traditional name, an honorific meaning Master Sun, given to the figure credited as the author of The Art of War, a foundational Chinese text on military strategy; his birth name is given as Sun Wu, with the courtesy name Changqing. According to the historian Sima Qian and other traditional Chinese sources, Sun Tzu lived from 544 to 496 BC and served as a military minister to King Helu of the state of Wu, reportedly demonstrating his tactical skill at the Battle of Boju in 506 BC, where Wu defeated the much larger state of Chu. The Art of War, attributed to him, became immensely influential across East Asia and eventually worldwide as a text on strategy, deception and the psychology of conflict, studied by military and civilian readers alike for more than two thousand years. Modern scholarship increasingly questions whether Sun Tzu existed as a single historical individual in the form later tradition describes: the Zuo Zhuan, a detailed chronicle of the Spring and Autumn period that records many other notable figures of the era, never mentions him, and the name Sun Wu appears in no text earlier than Sima Qian's own history, while scholars believe the earliest layers of The Art of War itself likely date to at least a century after Sun Tzu's traditional lifetime, suggesting the text developed and was attributed to him over time rather than being written whole by one author.