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N. K. Teletova A. P. Gannibal: On the Occasion of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Pushkin’s Great-Grandfather ABRAM PETROVICH GANNIBAL died from a “cranial illness” on April 20, 1781, in the eighty-fifth year of his life.1 The illness came about as the result of an injury to the head suffered long ago, when the young man, who was studying engineering in France, took part in a campaign and fought at the Spanish fortress of Fuenterrabia. That was in 1719. The Spanish border. Paris. La Fère and its ancient fortress. Before that—the journey from Russia to France in Peter the Great’s suite. Five and a half years of study—the French language and customs, and the sciences. And even earlier, before Russia, a life out of an Arabian tale. The boy was born in the principality of Logon (or Lagon), south of Lake Chad, in the city of the same name as the small principality consisting of three cities. Both the principality and the city were named for the Logon River, a tributary of the lake. Today Logon is part of the territory of the state of Cameroon. These were places settled by the African tribe Kotóko, to which the boy apparently belonged; he was the son of a local princeling who had been attacked by his more powerful neighbors. The father of Ibragim-Abram still professed the traditional animist religion of his tribe, while the neighboring principalities had already converted to Islam. This gave them grounds to view Logon as being at a lower stage of development, and to abduct their children and sell them into slavery. Most often the buyers proved to be the Ottoman Porte of Turkey. Abram’s father, as was the custom among African princes who practiced traditional religion, had many wives, and it was this and not Islam that was the reason for the abundance of these wives and the sons who aspired to power. Evidently the children were taken by force after a military defeat and sold or handed over to the Turks by the victors. The boy was taken away, transported via the waterway to the caravan 46 land route which ended in the port of Tripoli, and from there by sea he was delivered to Istanbul, or Constantinople, as it was then known by Christendom .2 So began the boy’s life in the seraglio of the Sultan Ahmed III, sovereign of the Turks. Yet another abduction from this second home and once again a journey north—to Muscovy, to Moscow itself. If the boy had merely seen the Ottoman sultan from afar, then here in Russia he became the tsar’s servant, his godson, the ward Abram Petrov. He accompanied the sovereign on all his campaigns, he was with him in decisive battles, and he later accompanied Peter I on his second—and last—European journey. Naturally, it has been conjectured that the little blackamoor in the white turban on the canvas in the Hermitage by Pierre-Denis Martin the Younger (a copy) depicting the Battle of Lesnaia with the Swedes in 1708 is none other than Abram Petrov. Martin painted the work between 1717 and 1723 in Paris, and it is possible that in those years Abram Petrov, who had taken part in the battle and was then studying in France, may have given the artist some background for the painting. The artist probably portrayed the black adolescent in the picture with the features of Abram Petrov, the young engineer. After France there were still several distant journeys, but they were all within the borders of Peter’s realm, including the Baltic fortresses and cities; St. Petersburg; exile to Siberia and the Chinese border, thanks to the efforts of Menshikov. And again, Petersburg and the Baltics; and a tour of duty near Vyborg on the Swedish border. And in his advanced years, life in the capital and on the estates which he had acquired near Petersburg. In the last of Abram’s surviving letters, dated November 10, 1780, the venerable old man asks his son to buy him some white Siberian fur, because all other fur rots, but does not warm.3 The old blackamoor was suffering from the cold in his country house Suida under the gray autumn sky of Ingermanland . Africa. Turkey. Russia. France and the Spanish campaign. Once again Russia—and the Baltics, Siberia, and finally, Petersburg. South, north, west, east. Having experienced all four...

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