Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, or Abram Hannibal or Abram Petrov (; c. 1696 – 14 May 1781), was a Russian Chief Military Engineer, General-in-Chief, and nobleman of African origin. As a child, Gannibal was captured by Ottomans and brought to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great. He was then raised in the emperor's court, with the emperor becoming his godfather at his baptism.Phillips, Mike. "Pushkin's African background – the Pushkins and the Gannibals." . British Library. Retrieved 26 May 2016.
Gannibal eventually rose to become a prominent member of the imperial court in the reign of Peter's daughter Elizabeth. He had ten children, most of whom became members of the Russian nobility. One of his great-grandsons was the author and poet Alexander Pushkin.
Early life The main reliable accounts of Gannibal's early life come from The Moor of Peter the Great, Pushkin's unfinished biography of his great-grandfather, published after Pushkin's death in 1837. Scholars argue that Pushkin's account may be inaccurate due to the author’s desire to elevate the status of his ancestors and family. There are a number of contradictions between the biographies of Pushkin and the German novel The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, based on his great-grandfather.Gee, Maggie. "Dark star of the Enlightenment. How did an African slave surmount 18th-century attitudes to become a top military commander and intimate of Peter the Great? Maggie Gee charts an extraordinary life.", New Statesman, 8 August 2005. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
Richard Pankhurst, the former professor at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, believed the young Abram, Ibrahim or Abraham, as he named him, was born around 1698. He was the son of a minor "prince" or chief. His father was relatively affluent, owning many livestock both inherited and taken in battle; he had several wives and 19 children. However, after his father died in battle trying to defend his territory from the Ottoman Turks trying to conquer the Red Sea, Abram was captured and taken to Constantinople by ship. His sister, Lagan, is said to have drowned in the sea in a desperate attempt to save her brother.
Abram stayed in the Ottoman Empire for about a year in the service of Sultan Ahmed III's household. At the time, the Russian ambassador Sava Vladislavich-Raguzinsky, representing Peter the Great, was looking for "a few clever little African slaves" for the Tsar's palace in Moscow; a Kammermohr was a common feature of European courts of the time, as an exotic symbol of the court's prestige. On orders of Vladislavich's superiors (one of whom was Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy, great-grandfather of the celebrated writer Leo Tolstoy), Abram was selected for this purpose and soon ransomed from the Sultan's viziers with a bribe. In 1704, the ambassador immediately dispatched him by land to Moscow in order to be presented to Tsar Peter the Great.
The Tsar is noted to have taken a liking to the boy's intelligence and potential for military service, and brought the child into his household. Abram was baptized in 1705, in St. Paraskeva Church in Vilnius, with Peter as his godfather. The date of Gannibal’s baptism held personal significance; he used that date as his birthday because he did not know his actual date of birth.
Abram valued his relationship with his godfather, as well as that of Peter's daughter (Elizabeth), and was loyal to them as if they were family. Starting at a young age, the boy Abram would travel alongside the emperor during his military campaigns, and at these military journeys he served as his godfather’s valet.Blakely, Allison. Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought, Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1986. . 14, 20–21. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
Education
In 1717, Abram was sent to Metz, France, to receive an education in the arts, sciences and warfare from the highest institutes available. By then he was fluent in several languages and excelled in mathematics and geometry. In 1718 Abram joined the French Royal Army with hopes of pleasing his godfather by expanding his learning in military engineering. He enrolled in the royal artillery academy at La Fère in 1720. During Abram's studies, conflict broke out between France and Spain, and he fought in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, rising to the rank of captain. While fighting on the French side against Spain, Abram received a head injury and was captured by the Spanish army. He was released in 1722 and continued his studies in Metz.
It was during his time in France that Abram adopted the surname "Gannibal" in honor of the Carthaginian general Hannibal (Gannibal being the traditional transliteration of the name in Russian).Schmemann, Serge. "Of African Princes and Russian Poets." The New York Times, November 12, 2010. Retrieved June 7, 2016. In Paris he met and befriended such Enlightenment figures as Montesquieu and Voltaire (this claim by his biographer Hugh Barnes is disputed by reviewer Andrew KahnBlack Russian – A Review by Andrew Kahn of Hugh Barnes' Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg. ). Voltaire called Gannibal the "dark star of the Enlightenment".Barnes, Hugh. Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg. London: Profile Books, 2006. . 4, 219. Retrieved May 23, 2016. Gannibal returned to Russia the following year and became first an engineer and then a mathematics tutor for one of the Tsar's private guard units.
Career
Gannibal's education was completed by 1723, and he was due to return to Russia. After the death of Peter in 1725, Prince Menshikov gained power in Russia due to his good standing with Peter. However, Menshikov was not fond of Gannibal and was suspicious of his foreign origins and superior education. Gannibal was exiled to Siberia in 1727. He first traveled to Kazan, then to Tobolsk and Irkutsk, and then to Selenginsk near the Mongolian border. He was pardoned in 1730 due to his technical skills, and completed his service in Siberia in 1733. During this time he built a fortress and led several construction projects, where he became a master engineer.
Elizabeth of Russia became the new monarch in 1741. Gannibal became a prominent member of her court, rose to the rank of major-general, and became superintendent of Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), a position he held from 1742 to 1752. A letter signed on 22 March 1744 by "A. Ganibal" is held at the Tallinn City Archives. In 1742, the Empress Elizabeth gave him the Mikhailovskoye estate in Pskov Oblast with hundreds of serfs.Gnammankou, Dieudonné. Abraham Hanibal – l’aïeul noir de Pouchkine. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1996. . 129. Retrieved May 25, 2016. After being made the chief military engineer of the Russian army in 1756, he received the rank of general-in-chief in 1759. He eventually retired to the estate Empress Elizabeth gave him, in 1762 during the reign of Catherine the Great.
In an official document that Gannibal submitted in 1742 to Empress Elizabeth, while petitioning for the rank of nobility and a coat of arms, he asked for the right to use a family crest emblazoned with an elephant and the mysterious word "FVMMO", which may mean "homeland" in the Kotoko language. In his book, Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg, Hugh Barnes writes of meeting with the sultan of Logone-Birni, who gave him the same translation of the word. However, Frances Somers-Cocks, author of The Moor of St Petersburg: In the Footsteps of a Black Russian, met the same sultan and received a different translation for FVMMO. She also suggested that FVMMO stands for the Latin expression Fortuna Vitam Meam Mutavit Omnino which means "Fortune has changed my life entirely."
Family Gannibal married twice. His first wife was Evdokia Dioper, a Greek woman. The couple married in 1731. Dioper despised her husband, whom she was forced to marry. The marriage between Dioper and Gannibal was very volatile, and he suspected her of infidelity early in their marriage.Parry, Albert (1923). "Abram Hannibal, the Favorite of Peter the Great." Journal of Negro History 8.4: 359–66. JSTOR. Retrieved May 25, 2016. Gannibal’s suspicions were confirmed when Dioper gave birth to a white daughter. When Gannibal found out that she had been unfaithful to him, he had her arrested and thrown into prison, where she spent eleven years.
Gannibal began living with another woman, Christina Regina Siöberg (1705–1781), daughter of Mattias Johan Siöberg and wife Christina Elisabeth d'Albedyll, and married her bigamously in Reval, Estonia, in 1736, a year after the birth of their first child and while he was still lawfully married to his first wife. His divorce from Dioper did not become final until 1753, upon which a fine and a penance were imposed on Gannibal, and Dioper was sent to a convent for the rest of her life. Gannibal's second marriage was nevertheless deemed lawful after his divorce. Gannibal’s second marriage to Christina was much happier, and he appreciated her fidelity and affection towards him.
On her paternal side, Gannibal’s second wife was descended from noble families in Scandinavia and Germany: Siöberg (Sweden), Galtung (Norway), and Grabow (Denmark) / von Grabow (Brandenburg). Her paternal grandfather was Gustaf Siöberg, Rittmester til Estrup, who died in 1694, whose wife Clara Maria Lauritzdatter Galtung (ca. 1651–1698) was the daughter of Lauritz Lauritzson Galtung (ca. 1615–1661) and of Barbara Grabow til Pederstrup (1631–1696).
Abram Gannibal and Christine Regina Siöberg had ten children. Their oldest son, Ivan, became an accomplished naval officer who helped found the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine in 1779 and attained the rank of general-in-chief, the second-highest military rank in imperial Russia. Another son, Osip, had a daughter, Nadezhda, who became the mother of the great writer Alexander Pushkin. More than one British aristocratic family descends from Pushkin, notably the Grosvenors (Duke of Westminster via Anastasia de Torby) and the Mountbattens (Marquess of Milford Haven, via Anastasia's sister Nadejda de Torby).
Legacy Debate over Gannibal's place of birth
Gannibal's actual place of birth continues to be uncertain, and is subject to speculation by modern historians. Until recent scholarly field work, it was generally assumed that he originated in Ethiopia.Marsden, Phillip. "From Slave to Slav." theguardian.com, October 21, 2005. Retrieved June 6, 2016. Chiefly Russian scholars for many years believed that he was from the vicinity of Mereb Melash, a province of the Ethiopian Empire in present-day Eritrea.*Smith (1957, p. 245) postulates that "Logon" stood "on the northern side of the Mareb River in what is now called Eritrea". Troyat (1957, p. 244) asserts that the place of Hannibal's origin was "on the banks of the Mareb River in what is now Eritrea". N. Ismailov posits that the Logon was located in the "Hamasien Eritrean plateau" (see Pankhurst, 1961, p. 423). Yosief (2000, pp. 36–40) notes that at the time, the overall ruler of Mereb Melash was Degezmati Habtesulus of Tseazega, who was in control of the region from 1679 till 1719. In a letter he wrote to Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, Gannibal stated that he was from the town of "Logon" or "Lagone". Anthropologist Dmitry Anuchin wrote an essay about Alexander Pushkin in which he theorized that "Lagone" referred to Logo-chewa in Eritrea. In 1999, the Russian Institute in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, also campaigned for a commemorative stamp to honor Pushkin's bicentennial.