Abraham Hannibal. The most famous "Arap" of the Russian Empire
Battle of Lesnaya. Bas-relief by A. K. Nartov. 1720s Fragment
The famous "Arap of Peter the Great" - Abram (Ibrahim) Hannibal, the great-grandfather of A. S. Pushkin, is probably known to everyone. However, there are still many mysteries and “dark spots” in his biography, starting from the place and time of his birth and the circumstances of his appearance in Russia. They even argue about the color of his skin.
Many are sure that Abram Hannibal was a Negro. Pushkin himself, realizing that he was not handsome and complex, like Apollo, decided to turn his flaws into dignity and tried to attract the attention of girls and married ladies with his exotic appearance (which in fact was far from exotic) and origin. This is how the young Alexander Pushkin looks like in the portrait of S. G. Chirikov, written in 1810. – light skin, gray or blue eyes, red hair:
S. G. Chirikov. Portrait of A. S. Pushkin. 1810s
To be a descendant of an Arab, Pushkin seemed uninteresting - he wanted to be a "Negro". In a note to the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, the poet proudly informed readers:
And in the poem "Yuriev" he reminded of this, speaking about himself:
And he also repeated with pleasure after Bulgarin, who ridiculed him:
Was bought for a bottle of rum.
(And then all of a sudden someone didn’t read this in Bulgarin’s book).
And, I must say, Alexander Sergeevich really convinced a lot of people in his “Africanism”. Fyodor Sologub, for example, called Pushkin "a moor who rushed at Russian women". However, in fact, the great-grandson of Abram Petrovich Hannibal, even a “Negro”, even a “Arap” was more than dubious - due to a very distant relationship. And some researchers believe that the poet's great-grandfather (like the "Moor Othello") had nothing to do with blacks.
Araps, Negroes and Moors
Let's first try to figure out who the "Araps" are. Initially, the Berbers and Arabs of North Africa were called so in Europe - this area is called the Maghreb. Vladimir Dal also confused everyone, who called the words “Arap”, “Moor” and “Negro” synonyms.
The words "Negro" and "Moor" really have the same meaning - "black", only in translation from different languages: Negro - from Latin, Moor - from Greek.
The Romans called Mauretania a country located in northwestern Africa - on the territory of western Algeria and northern Morocco. This is what the Moorish king Masinissa looks like - an ally of Hannibal Barkid in the Second Punic War and a participant in the battle of Zama (October 19, 202 BC):
Silver coin with profile of Masinissa
In the Middle Ages, the Moors were called the Arabs of North Africa, whose skin has a darker shade even compared to those Europeans who live in southern Italy or in Andalusia.
As for the Arabs, the word "Arab" is clearly heard here. However, there is a “second bottom”: the fact is that Europeans often bought blacks from Arabs (Maghreb pirates). And therefore, in European countries, blacks were indeed often called araps. Negro boys were in demand because of their exoticism: many European aristocrats sought to have a “Arapchonka” in their service. Here is how it looks in a painting by the XNUMXth-century French artist Claude Francois Vignon:
The fashion for Africans also did not pass Russia. It is known that the Araps even served the mother of Tsar Mikhail Romanov. And at the court of Catherine II there were 10 immigrants from Africa, their position was called: “araps of the Supreme Court”, and there were“ araps ”senior and junior.
In addition, in the European armies, Negroes were very popular as regimental musicians - timpani, trumpeters, drummers. It is curious that the timpani in some French regiments were officially called Negroes - even if they were blond-haired and blue-eyed natives of Normandy. And the famous French commander of the 1747th century, Moritz of Saxony, even tried to create a separate Negro Lancers unit (along with the Tatar, Wallachian and Mauritanian). It is known that in 9 he had 20 Moors and 1749 Negroes. By 49, the number of Negroes was brought to XNUMX.
Black Lancer of Marshal Moritz of Saxony, 1745
Therefore, if the Venetian Moor Othello was definitely not a Negro, then there are still questions about the “Arap” Abram Hannibal.
Origin of Abram Hannibal
And what did Abram Petrovich Hannibal himself write about himself? He claimed that his father was a prince and owned three cities, the main of which was Lagon, located on the banks of either the river or the sea. Abram's father allegedly had many wives and children. Hannibal called the name of one of the sisters - Lagan. According to the most common version, Abram's birthplace is Abyssinia - somewhere on the border of modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Abyssinians have mixed - Negroid and Caucasoid features, skin color - from swarthy to dark brown. This is what the purebred Ethiopian Letezenbet Gidey looks like, the world record holder at distances of 5000 m, 10 m, 000 km on the highway and in the half marathon:
It has also been suggested that the city of Lagon, named by Abram, was located on the territory of modern northern Cameroon - south of Lake Chad. This is already "Black Africa", and the boy brought from there must have been a Negro.
However, after the death of his godfather Peter I, Abram himself changed his surname: there was Petrov, Hannibal became. And he took a new surname in honor of the great commander, whom he considered his countryman. And ancient Carthage, as you know, was located on the territory of modern Tunisia - this is part of the Maghreb, now Berbers and Arabs live here. Yes, and Carthage was founded by the Punians - immigrants who arrived here from Phoenicia. They were Indo-Europeans who spoke a language related to the Semitic. That is, blacks have never lived in this territory. Therefore, Vladimir Vysotsky, who played the role of Hannibal in the Soviet film “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Married”, may not have had to engage in “blackfacing” (from blackface) now mercilessly criticized in the West and smear his face with shoe polish. However, he doesn’t even look like a black man in makeup:
How not too similar to the Negro in this portrait is Abram Petrovich Hannibal himself:
However, some believe that this is a portrait of a Russian general of German origin I. I. Möller-Zakomelsky. But the very fact that Hannibal's "Arap" is confused with a German speaks volumes.
But in this portrait by one of the students of D. Levitsky, we definitely see the eldest son of "Arap Peter I" - Ivan Abramovich Gannibal:
Agree, he looks a little like a mulatto. Like his brother Isaac in the miniature below, he is swarthy, but there are no Negroid features:
Miniature depicting I. A. Hannibal
The brothers' mother was Christina-Regina von Sjöberg, the daughter of a Swedish captain and a Baltic German from the noble family von Albedil. She lived until 1792, gave birth to 11 children, and on her part Pushkin's origin is the most "Nordic".
Way to Russia
But how did the African boy Ibrahim, who became known as Abram Gannibal, end up in Russia? The “petition” written by him in 1742, in which he asks the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna to grant him the nobility and approve the family coat of arms, has been preserved.
Coat of arms of the Hannibal family
It is believed that Abram Petrovich actually copied it from the coat of arms of Peter I's comrade-in-arms Franz Lefort:
But let's get back to Hannibal's "petition", who in this document states:
And immediately questions arise. How did he “by his own will” “leave” for Russia, if he was still in his “young years”? And at the same time, apparently, he showed honor to "Count Sava Vladislavich" by agreeing to keep him company. Meanwhile, Savva Lukich Raguzinsky-Vladislavich (a Serb who later transferred to the Russian service) at the beginning of the 1704th century was neither a count nor a Russian subject. In Constantinople, he was on an unofficial mission - as a private person. Raguzinsky arrived in the Ottoman capital in 1706, left it not in 1705, but in 1705. And Hannibal himself another time reports that already in 1707 he was baptized by Peter I. This is impossible if you believe that he came to Russia with Raguzinsky. Therefore, in the so-called "German biography of Hannibal", which we will talk about a little later, it is stated that the baptism took place in XNUMX.
However, traces of the "Arap Abram" can be traced in Russia since 1698. This was written by such authoritative researchers as D. Blagoy and N. Granovskaya. So, in the palace account book for 1699, a caftan is mentioned among the expenses for tailoring "foreigner Avram Petrov", in another place of the same document - a shirt and boots"Abram's arapa". They also paid attention to the engraving of Shkhonebek, on which he depicted Peter I and his “Arapchonka” in 1705, look at it:
This seven-year-old "Arapchon" standing behind the emperor looks very tall. Now, if he was 7 years old back in 1698, and in 1705 he was already 14, then everything is fine. Although still quite high (at that time). Here, the “Arapchonka” has obvious Negroid features. However, his name is not given. Perhaps this is not the “Arab child” that received the name Peter at baptism, but became known as Abram Petrovich Hannibal, but the second one, brought to Russia at the same time and received the name Alexei at baptism? And how reliable is this portrait? Did Schkhonebek have an order to write exactly a typical Negro? After all, even Peter I looks completely different in different portraits, and one can only guess which of the portraits is closer to the original. Here, for example, is a lifetime portrait of this king by A. Shunyans, painted in Vienna in 1698:
But much more common are idealized and romanticized portraits, like this one:
I. Nikitin. Portrait of Peter I, 1717
The letter of Lefort, addressed to Peter, who was part of the Great Embassy, is curious: in it he recalls that several ... slaves must be brought from "enlightened Europe". On this basis, it has been suggested that it was Peter I who bought his future godson in Holland or England. And the Saxon diplomat Georg von Gelbig, in his book “Russian Favorites” published in Tübingen in 1809, states:
In general, it is impossible to choose the only correct version at the moment, but Hannibal is lying, telling a romantic tale about a princely son languishing in captivity of the Turkish Sultan - in order to ascribe to himself a “noble” origin, in which, by the way, he is absolutely not original.
Pushkin himself tried to research the biography of his ancestor, and after the death of the poet, among other documents, a notebook was found with a “biography” of Abram Gannibal written in German. It is not clear how this document fell into the hands of Pushkin, and who was its author, but it can be confidently asserted that it was written on the basis of the information from the German Biography of Hannibal mentioned above - an anonymous work that contained a huge number of errors and simply absurd statements. V. Nabokov, for example, in the article "Pushkin and Hannibal" calls this source "idiotic document, comic bombastic German biography", and the future Hannibal -"an ordinary african slave". Nabokov believed that this work was written after the death of Abram Petrovich by one of the German relatives "Mrs. Hannibal"(nee von Sjoberg). It is now believed that the author of the German Biography of Hannibal was the husband of his youngest daughter, Adam Rotkirch, and it was written after 1786 with the sole purpose of achieving the inclusion of the Hannibal family in the sixth book of hereditary nobles. Pushkin in the poem "My genealogy" writes about his ancestor:
Increased zeal, incorruptible,
The king's breastplate, not a slave.
Confidant! That is, a person who is trusted with the most secret secrets. A very bold statement. In fact, as we will see later, Peter I showed no interest in the fate of his godson until 1716, and in the future he practically did not take any part in his fate. The peak of Abram Hannibal's career came during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna.
In the next article, we will continue the story about Abram Petrovich Hannibal. Let's talk about his life in Russia under different monarchs - from Peter I to Catherine II.
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