About the Book : Genealogy and Status : Hereditary Office Holding and Kinship
in North China under Mongol Rule
By shedding light on a long-forgotten epigraphic genre that flourished in North
China during the Mongol Empire, or Yuan Dynasty (12711368), Genealogy and Status
explores the ways the conquered Chinese people understood and represented the
alien Mongol ruling principles through their own cultural tradition. This
epigraphic genre, which this book collectively calls "genealogical steles," was
quite unique in the history of Chinese epigraphy.
Northern Chinese officials commissioned these steles exclusively to record a
familys extensive genealogy, rather than the biography or achievements of an
individual. Tomoyasu Iiyama shows