Some of the oldest historical records simply list what happened each year. Annals are chronological entries that note events in sequence, often briefly and without extensive analysis. Monastic houses, royal courts, and city governments kept them as working memory.

Medieval European annals frequently begin with the year of the Incarnation and then record deaths of rulers, battles, eclipses, and local disasters. Chinese and Islamic traditions produced comparable year-by-year compilations. The form prioritizes order and continuity over narrative flourish.

Historians value annals for their contemporary perspective and for the way they reveal what compilers considered worth remembering. Gaps and silences are themselves evidence. Later writers often expanded annalistic notes into fuller chronicles, yet the bare yearly record remains a foundational type of historical documentation.

• Year-by-year chronological record
• Often brief and factual
• Kept by courts, monasteries, and cities
• Valuable for contemporary detail