What classes did the Yuan dynasty divide people into and why were they divided into classes?

The rulers of the Yuan dynasty divided people into four classes, the highest rulers, that is, the first-class people are Mongols, the second class is the Sermon people, the third class is the Han people, and the fourth class is the Nan people, the Yuan dynasty in order to safeguard the ruling privileges of the Mongolian aristocracy and weaken the resistance of the various ethnic groups, the ethnic oppression policy of division, and the status of these four classes of people in the political, legal, and economic status, there are different provisions, with an obvious ethnic discrimination.

There was no Mongolia as an ethnic group a long time ago. Records of Mongolia can be found in the ancient books we used to have. Around the time of the Tang Dynasty, they were still a tribe, not a nation. However, in the later development, they gradually grew, especially at that time the Mongolian tribal rulers ruled the Mongolian tribes, so that they became a whole, in terms of strength have been a great achievement, they because of the existence of nomadic civilization, so that the strength of their own strength to strengthen, and gradually have a conquest of the mind. The Song Dynasty at the time, weak, naturally not a strong period of the Mongols can be compared, such a reality also created the Yuan Dynasty finally became the existence of ruling the Han Chinese nation.

First of all, there is a strong sense of hierarchy within the Mongols, the nobles and herdsmen are very different, and there is also a clear difference within the nobility, the highest golden family Genghis Khan is distinguished from other nobles. When the Yuan Dynasty ruled the Han Chinese, it is inevitable that it is divided into grades, and secondly, their cultural level is not as high as the Han Chinese, he wanted to let this culture into his rule, but also worried about the local rebellion, had to be divided into grades to strengthen the maintenance of the Mongolian nobility's privilege of rule.