annal

An annal is a record that preserves events year by year. In its simplest sense, an annal is an entry for a single year; as a collection, annals are books of yearly entries compiled over time. The word comes from Latin annalis, from annus, year. In English usage, annal often designates both the individual yearly note and the whole year-by-year compilation; a related adjective is annalistic.

Historically, annals were produced in ancient and medieval contexts by governments, monasteries, and scholars. They emphasize political events, rulers, wars, and religious matters, but can also record natural phenomena, notable births and deaths, and social notes. An important distinction from chronicles is the formal, year-by-year structure rather than a continuous narrative; however, many annals include narrative passages when events fall outside the regular yearly entry.

Notable examples include Tacitus's Latin Annales, a historical work covering the Roman Empire in roughly 14–68 CE; medieval Irish annals such as the Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Tigernach; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a key English annalistic compilation. These sources are foundational for reconstructing past events but must be read critically due to gaps, later interpolations, and varying chronologies.

In modern usage, annals are used as sources in historical research and are discussed in the study of historiography and manuscript studies. They illustrate how societies organized memory around time and yearly cycles, and how later editors shaped extant texts.