Hannibal, Abram Petrovich

General-in-Chief, "Arap of Peter the Great", great-grandfather of the poet Pushkin, was the son of a sovereign Abyssinian prince, a Turkish vassal, and was born in the mountains. Lagone (northern Abyssinia). His year of birth is not known exactly: according to Pushkin it turns out that he was born in 1688, according to Bantysh-Kamensky - in 1691, according to Longinov - in 1696, but later researchers consider the year of his birth to be 1697 or 1698. Little Ibrahim ended up with some other noble youths as an amanat in the Sultan's seraglio in Constantinople, where he lived for more than a year. When Peter I instructed his envoy in Turkey to get Arab boys for him, Count S.V. Raguzinsky brought Ibrahim to Moscow to the Tsar. According to G.’s own testimony, he left for Russia in 1706 “of his own free will” (however, his other testimony about the number of years spent under Peter I does not coincide with this). From then on, until 1716, the boy was constantly under Peter I, performing the duties of valet and secretary. In 1707 he was baptized in Vilna in the Pyatnitskaya Church (the memorial plaque on the church gives the wrong date for this event - 1705). The successors were the Tsar himself and the Polish Queen Christina-Ebergardina. At baptism, Ibrahim was given the name Peter, but since he did not want to part with his previous name, Peter allowed him to be called Abram. The surname Hannibal was assigned to him only in 1733-1737, before that he was officially called Abram Petrov. In 1717, G. was sent by the king to France to study engineering sciences. During his stay in Paris, he had to be in great poverty, because little money was allocated for his maintenance. In order to thoroughly study the art of engineering, G. decided to enter the engineering school established in 1720, for which he had to enroll in the French army, since only this gave the right to enter the school. There is, however, news that back in 1719 he served as a volunteer in the French army fighting the Spaniards, was wounded in the head and captured. According to his own testimony, at the beginning of 1722 he was a lieutenant, but according to another testimony, he was a guards captain. Summoned back to Russia by Peter I in 1722, G. unsuccessfully tried to leave him in France and at the beginning of 1723 he came to St. Petersburg. He had to apply his knowledge, acquired in foreign lands, for the first time on engineering work in Kronstadt. In February 1724, he was granted a lieutenant in the bombardment company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and received instructions to train young noble soldiers in mathematical sciences. Until his death, Peter I did not change his merciful attitude towards his blackamoor and, dying, entrusted him to his daughter Elizabeth. Under Catherine I, G. taught mathematics to the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Peter Alekseevich. On November 23, 1726, he presented the Empress with a book he had written about engineering. G. was close to the circle of Menshikov’s opponents, grouped around Prince. A.P. Volkonskaya, nee Bestuzheva-Ryumina, which caused his disgrace when, upon the accession of Peter II, Menshikov became the ruler of the state: on May 8, 1727, he was sent to Kazan under the pretext of drawing up a project for repairing the local fortress; upon arrival there, he received orders to go to Tobolsk to build a fortress, and from there he was sent to the Chinese border to build the Selenginsk fortress. Meanwhile, after the fall of Menshikov, the case of Princess Volkonskaya and members of her circle, accused of political intrigue, arose again, and on December 22, 1729, the Supreme Privy Council decided to arrest G. and transport him under escort to Tomsk. However, this matter did not have any bad consequences for G. Anna Ioannovna renamed him on February 25, 1730 from bombardier-lieutenant to major of the Tobolsk garrison, and on September 25, at the request of Minikh, to engineer-captain. G. returned to European Russia and in March 1731 was assigned to fortification engineering in Pernov. On May 21, 1733, he retired and settled on the Karrikulya manor in Revel district, which he bought with money bequeathed to him by Peter I. In November 1740 (according to the form), G. again decided to serve with the rank of artillery lieutenant colonel in the Revel garrison, but only on January 23, 1741, a Senate protocol was drawn up on a personal decree on the promotion of artillery major A.P.G. to lieutenant colonel and about giving him a lifelong lease of the village of Ragola in Revel district. The accession of Elizabeth Petrovna brought him forward. Pushkin says that when she ascended the throne, G. reminded her of himself, writing: “Remember me when you come to your kingdom.” On January 12, 1742, he was promoted to major general and appointed chief commandant of Revel; on the same day he was granted the palace estate of Mikhailovskaya Guba in the Pskov district with 569 peasant souls. On September 28, 1743, the village of Ragola, which was under his lifelong lease, was given to him for eternal and hereditary possession. Subsequently, G. received several more estates within the St. Petersburg and Pskov provinces. According to the census of 1758, 854 souls of peasants were listed behind him in the Pskov province. In the summer of 1745 he was a member of the commission for the delimitation of Russia and Sweden. On April 25, 1752, he was renamed major general from fortification and appointed to manage the construction part of the engineering department. In 1753-1754 G. was again involved in the delimitation of Russian lands with Sweden. On December 25, 1755, he was promoted to lieutenant general, with the appointment of the Vyborg governor, but after 2 days he remained with the engineering corps, where he was one of the main employees of Count P.I. Shuvalov and showed remarkable abilities in the art of engineering. Then appointed a member of the main office of artillery and fortification, G. On July 4, 1756, he was renamed from lieutenant general to general engineer, with an appointment to be attached to the engineering corps, and on October 23, 1759, he was promoted to general-in-chief with the appointment of chief director Ladoga canals and commissions of Kronstadt and Rogervik buildings. On August 30, 1760, he was awarded the Alexander Ribbon. On June 9, 1762, G. was dismissed due to old age. He spent the last years of his life in one of the estates granted to him - Suida, where he died on May 14, 1781. He was buried here, but his grave has not survived. - G. was married twice. For the first time, he married upon his return from Siberia at the beginning of 1731 to a Greek woman, Evdokia Andreevna Dioper, who was married to him against her will and soon began to cheat on him, for which her husband subjected her to torture and corporal punishment. For 5 years, due to his complaint, she had to sit in prison. The divorce case lasted about 20 years. Finally, on September 9, 1753, the marriage was dissolved, the wife was found guilty and exiled to the Staraya Ladoga Monastery, where she soon died. Meanwhile, while still in Pernov, G. became acquainted with the daughter of the captain of the local regiment, Matvey von Schöberg, Christina Regina, and in 1736 he married her in Revel. When the first marriage was dissolved, the second was recognized as legal, but only G. was subject to penance and a fine. The second wife died the day before her husband's death, on May 13, 1781, at the age of 76, and was buried with him. From her G. had 5 sons: Ivan (1737?-1801), Peter (1742-1783), Osip (1744-1806), Isaac (1747-1804) and Yakov (born in 1748) and 4 -x daughters: Elizabeth (born 1737), behind Lieutenant Colonel Andr. Pavel. Pushkin, Anna (born in 1741), for Major General Neelov, Sofia, for A.K. von Rotkirch, and Agrippina (born in 1746). - A.S. Pushkin was very interested in the personality of his great-grandfather, brought him out as a character in his unfinished novel “Arap of Peter the Great” and dedicated inspired lines to him in “My Genealogy.” However, much of what Pushkin says about him is not true. The Abyssinian, and not Negro, origin of Hannibal has recently been proven by prof. D. N. Anuchin (“A. S. Pushkin. Anthropological study”, M., 1899, reprint of feuilletons from “Russian Vedomosti”, 1899, No. 99, 106, 114, 120, 127, 134, 143, 163, 172, 180, 193 and 209).

Full collection op. Pushkin, edited by S. A. Vengerov, vol. I (B. L. Modzalevsky, "Pushkin's Family", 14-20); M. Longinov, “Abram Petrovich Hannibal” (Russian Archive, 1864, pp. 218-232); S. N. Shubinsky, “Historical Sketches and Stories”, 5th ed., St. Petersburg, 1908 (“Book.

A. P. Volkonskaya and her friends"); S. I. Opatovich, "Evdokia Andreevna Hannibal" ("Russian Star.", 1877, I, 69-78); A. Barsukov, "Autobiographical testimony... A . P. Hannibal" ("Russian Archive", 1891, II, 101-102); P. Pekarsky, "Science and Literature in Russia under Peter the Great", I, 163-167; B. L. Modzalevsky, "Pedigree Hannibal" (Chronicle of Historical-Genealogy. General in Moscow, 1907, issue 2); E. I. Sondoevsky, "On the biography of Hannibal, the ancestors of A. S. Pushkin" (Collection of works of members of the Pskov Archaeologist. General. , 1896); Gelbig, “Russian chosen ones” (Russian Star., 1886, vol. II, pp. 105, 106; bibliographical instructions are given in the note).

(Polovtsov)

Hannibal, Abram Petrovich

[This article is published instead of an article on the same subject, which is not complete enough and incorrectly calls Hannibal - Hannibal (see).] - “Arap of Peter the Great,” a Negro by blood, great-grandfather (maternal) of the poet Pushkin. There is still a lot that remains unclear in G.’s biography. The son of a sovereign prince, G. was probably born in 1696; in the eighth year it was stolen and brought to Constantinople, from where in 1705 or 1706 Savva Raguzinsky brought it as a gift to Peter I, who loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities, and had previously kept “araps.” Having received a nickname in memory of the glorious Carthaginian, G. converted to Orthodoxy; His successors were the Tsar (who also gave him his patronymic) and the Queen of Poland. From then on, G. was “inseparably” near the king, slept in his room, and accompanied him on all campaigns. In 1716 he went abroad with the sovereign. Perhaps he held the position of orderly under the tsar, although in documents he is mentioned three times along with the jester Lacoste. At this time, G. received a salary of 100 rubles a year. G. stayed in France to study; After spending 1 1/2 years at an engineering school, he entered the French army, participated in the Spanish War, was wounded in the head and rose to the rank of captain. Returning to Russia in 1723, he was assigned to the Preobrazhensky Regiment as an engineer-lieutenant of a bombardment company, the captain of which was the Tsar himself. After the death of Peter, G. joined the party dissatisfied with the rise of Menshikov, for which he was sent to Siberia (1727) to move the city of Selinginsk to a new location. In 1729, it was ordered that G.’s papers be taken away and kept under arrest in Tomsk, giving him 10 rubles a month. In January 1730, G. was appointed as a major in the Tobolsk garrison, and in September, he was transferred as a captain to the Engineering Corps, where G. was listed until his retirement in 1733. At the beginning of 1731, G. married in St. Petersburg to a Greek woman, Evdokia Andreevna Dioper and was soon sent to Pernov to teach conductors mathematics and drawing. Married against her will, Evdokia Andreevna cheated on her husband, which caused persecution and torture from the deceived. The case went to court; she was arrested and kept in prison for 11 years under terrible conditions. Meanwhile, G. became acquainted with Christina Sheberg in Pernov, had children with her and married her in 1736 while his wife was alive, the litigation with whom ended only in 1753; The spouses were divorced, the wife was exiled to the Staraya Ladoga Monastery, and G. was subject to penance and a fine, although the second marriage was recognized as legal. Having entered the service again in 1740, G. went uphill with the accession of Elizabeth. In 1742 he was appointed commandant of Revel and awarded estates; was listed as a "actual chamberlain." Transferred in 1752 again to the Corps of Engineers, G. was appointed to manage the affairs of delimiting lands with Sweden. Having risen to the rank of general-in-chief and the Alexander Ribbon, G. retired (1762) and died in 1781. G. had a natural intelligence and showed remarkable abilities as an engineer. He wrote memoirs in French, but destroyed them. According to legend, Suvorov owed the opportunity to choose a military career to G., who convinced his father to yield to his son’s inclinations. G. had six children in 1749; of them Ivan participated in a naval expedition, took Navarino, distinguished himself at Chesma, founded Kherson (1779), died as general-in-chief in 1801. Daughter of another son of G., Osipa, was the mother of A.S. Pushkin, who mentions his descent from G. in the poems: “To Yuryev”, “To Yazykov” and “My Genealogy”. See Helbig, “Russische Günstlinge” (translated in “Russian Star”, 1886, 4); "Biography of G. in German in the papers of A. S. Pushkin"; "Autobiographical testimony of G." ("Russian Arch.", 1891, 5); Pushkin, “Genealogy of the Pushkins and Hanibals,” note 13 to Chapter I of “Eugene Onegin” and “Arap of Peter the Great”; Longinov, "Abram Petrovich Ganibal" ("Russian Architect", 1864); Opatovich, "Evdokia Andreevna G." ("Russian Star." 1877); "Vorontsov's Archive", II, 169, 177; VI, 321; VII, 319, 322; "Letter from A. B. Buturlin" ("Russian Architect", 1869); "Report to G. Catherine II" ("Collected Historical Society." X, 41); "Notes of a Noble Lady" ("Russian Architect", 1882, I); Khmyrov, “A.P. Hanibal, Peter the Great’s arap” (“World Work”, 1872, No. 1); Bartenev, “Pushkin’s birth and childhood” (Otech. Notes, 1853, No. 11). Wed. instructions from Longinov, Opatovich and in "Russian Star." 1886, no. 4, p. 106.

E. Shmurlo.

(Brockhaus)

Large biographical encyclopedia. 2009 .

See what “Hannibal, Abram Petrovich” is in other dictionaries:

Hannibal (Abram Petrovich) Arab of Peter the Great, Negro by blood, great-grandfather (maternal) of the poet Pushkin. There is still a lot that remains unclear in the biography of Hannibal. The son of a sovereign prince, Hannibal was probably born in 1696; kidnapped in the eighth year... ... Biographical Dictionary

- (c. 1697 1781) Russian military engineer, general chief (1759). Son of an Ethiopian prince. Valet and secretary of Peter I. Great-grandfather of A.S. Pushkin, who immortalized Hannibal in the story Arab of Peter the Great...

- (Ibrahim) (about 1697 1781), Russian military engineer, general chief (1759). Son of an Ethiopian prince; from 1705 in Russia. Valet and secretary of Peter I, accompanied him on campaigns. Participated in the construction of a number of fortresses; from 1756 general engineer,... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Hannibal Abram (Ibrahim) Petrovich [about 1697, Lagon, Northern Ethiopia, 14.5.1781, Suyda, now Leningrad. region], Russian military engineer, general chief (1759), great-grandfather (maternal) of A. S. Pushkin. The son of an Ethiopian prince, taken hostage by the Turks and in 1706... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Ibrahim Petrovich Hannibal Date of birth around 1696 or 1697 Place of birth Logon, Africa Date of death May 14, 1781 (1781 05 14) Place of death Suida, St. Petersburg province ... Wikipedia

- [This article is printed instead of an article on the same subject, which is not complete enough and incorrectly calls Hannibal Hannibal] Arab of Peter the Great, Negro by blood, great-grandfather (maternal) of the poet Pushkin. There is still a lot in G.’s biography... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

- ... Wikipedia

Hannibal, Abram Petrovich- See also (1698 1781). The poet's great-grandfather. He was brought to Russia by Peter I as a child and was soon sent abroad to study military affairs. He began serving in the bombardment company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. With the rank of captain of the engineering troops, he built a fortress... ... Dictionary of literary types

- “Arap of Peter the Great”, great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin Date of birth: around 1697 ... Wikipedia

- (about 16961781), military engineer, general chief (1759). Son of an Ethiopian prince. Since 1705 in Russia. Godson of Peter I; valet and secretary of the king. In 171723 he studied artillery and military engineering in France. Since 1756 general... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Abram Hannibal

figure of the Petrine and Elizabethan eras, great-grandfather of Pushkin

Abram Petrovich Hannibal(before baptism Ibrahim), an outstanding figure of the Petrine and Elizabethan eras, great-grandfather of Pushkin, born in 1696. The exact date of birth is unknown. By origin, Hannibal was an Ethiopian, the son of a sovereign prince from northern Abyssinia. As a boy, he was taken as a hostage to Constantinople, from where he was brought to Moscow and presented to Peter I. Peter favored him, took him with him everywhere, taught him to read and write and various sciences, and then assigned him the best teachers. He received his nickname in memory of the glorious Carthaginian Hannibal. In the Vilna church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa he converted to Orthodoxy, and the tsar himself was his successor. In 1709, young Abram took part in the Battle of Poltava. In 1717, Peter sent him to France. For six years, Hannibal studied the art of war, artillery and engineering, Latin and French. Upon his return, he was appointed caretaker of the royal cabinet, as well as the chief translator of foreign books at court; By order of the tsar, he began to train young officers in engineering and mathematical sciences. After the death of Peter, Hannibal's long disgrace began, which ended only with the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna: in memory of her father, she generously rewarded him and granted him estates. From this time on, a new flowering of his varied activities began, which left a noticeable mark on Russian history. The most educated man of his time, he was a builder of fortresses, supervised the construction of the Ladoga Canal, was the director of the Kronstadt fortress, the commandant of Revel, the Vyborg governor, and the chief of Russian artillery; rose to the rank of general-in-chief. According to existing legend, Suvorov owed his choice of a military career to Hannibal, who convinced his father to yield to his son’s inclinations. By 1749, Hannibal had six children. The daughter of one of his sons, Osip, later became the mother of Alexander Pushkin. Abram Petrovich spent his last years on the Suyda estate near St. Petersburg, where he died on May 25, 1781. Pushkin showed great interest and pride in his remarkable ancestor. He admired Hannibal’s diligence, incorruptibility, and the fact that he managed to become “a confidante, not a slave” of the king. Alexander Sergeevich portrayed him in the novel “Arap of Peter the Great.”

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Abram Petrovich Hannibal(1696 - April 20, 1781) - Russian military engineer, general-in-chief, great-grandfather of A. S. Pushkin. Ibrahim was the son of a black African prince - a vassal of the Turkish Sultan. In 1703 he was captured and sent to the Sultan's palace in Constantinople. In 1704, the Russian ambassador Savva Raguzinsky brought him to Moscow, where a year later he was baptized. Since Peter I was the godfather, in Orthodoxy Ibrahim received the name Peter. From 1756 he was the chief military engineer of the Russian army; in 1759 he received the rank of general-in-chief. In 1762 he retired. In Hannibal’s second marriage, Osip Abramovich Hannibal was born, A.S. Pushkin’s maternal grandfather. A. S. Pushkin dedicated the story “Arap of Peter the Great” to his great-grandfather.

Origin

There is still a lot that remains unclear in the biography of Hannibal. The son of a sovereign prince (“Niger” of noble origin, according to the notes of his youngest son Peter), Ibrahim (Abram) was probably born in 1688 (or 1696) in Africa. The traditional version, coming from the German biography of Hannibal, familiar to Pushkin, compiled by his son-in-law Rotkirch, connected the homeland of Peter the Great's Arab with the north of Ethiopia (Abyssinia).

Recent research by Sorbonne graduate Benin Slavist Dieudonné Gnammankou (author of the book Abram Hannibal, which developed Nabokov's idea) identifies his homeland as the border of modern Cameroon and Chad, where the Logon Sultanate of the Kotoko people, who are a descendant of the Sao civilization, was located.

Biography

In the eighth year of his life, Ibrahim was kidnapped along with his brother and brought to Constantinople, from where in 1705 Savva Raguzinsky brought the brothers as a gift to Peter I, who loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities, and had previously kept “araps.” According to an alternative version (Blagoy, Tumiyants, etc.), Abram Petrovich was purchased by Peter the Great around 1698 in Europe and brought to Russia.

In the Vilna Church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, the boys converted to Orthodoxy (in all likelihood, in the second half of July 1705); His successors were Tsar Peter (who gave him both his patronymic and surname “Petrov”) and Queen Christiana Ebergardina of Poland, wife of King Augustus II. Ibrahim received the Russified name Abram, his brother - the name Alexey. One of the memorial plaques on the current church building reminds of this. At the same time, not all researchers share the official version of Hannibal's baptism, believing that the boy was baptized by Peter around 1698.

Abram Petrovich was “inseparably” near the king, slept in his room, and accompanied him on all campaigns. In documents he is mentioned three times along with the jester Lacoste, but since 1714 Peter I entrusts him with various assignments, including secret ones, he becomes the Tsar's orderly and secretary. In 1716 he went abroad with the sovereign. At this time, Abram received a salary of 100 rubles a year. In France, Abram Petrovich remained to study; After spending 1.5 years at an engineering school, he entered the French army, took part in the Spanish War of 1718-1719, was wounded in the head and rose to the rank of captain. Returning to Russia in 1723, he was assigned to the Preobrazhensky Regiment as an engineer-lieutenant of a bombardment company, the captain of which was the Tsar himself.

After the death of Peter, Hannibal (he chose to bear this surname from the late 1720s, in honor of the famous ancient Carthaginian commander Hannibal) joined the party dissatisfied with the rise of Alexander Menshikov, for which he was sent to Siberia (1727). On the way to exile, in Kazan, he composed a petition to the almighty temporary worker:

"Do not destroy me completely... and who should such a lofty person crush - such a reptile and the very last creature on earth, which worms and grass can deprive of this light: beggar, sire, selfless, foreigner, naked, barefoot, greedy, thirsty; Have mercy, intercessor and father and protector of orphans and widows."

In 1729, it was ordered that Hannibal’s papers be taken away and kept under arrest in Tomsk, giving him 10 rubles a month. In January 1730, Hannibal was appointed major in the Tobolsk garrison, and in September he was transferred as a captain to the Engineering Corps, where Hannibal was listed until his retirement in 1733. At this time, he was sent to Pernov to teach mathematics and drawing to conductors. In 1731-1735 commandant of the Pernovsky fortified area.

Having entered service again in 1740, Hannibal went uphill with the accession of Elizabeth. In 1742 he was appointed commandant of Revel and was awarded the Karyakul manor and other estates; was listed as an active chamberlain. In the same year, Elizabeth granted him palace lands in the Voronetsky district of the Pskov province, where Hannibal founded an estate, later called Petrovskoye.

In 1745, Hannibal was appointed to manage the delimitation of lands with Sweden. Transferred in 1752 again to the Engineering Corps, he became the manager of the Engineering part of all of Russia, supervising the construction of fortifications of the Tobol-Ishim line, as well as Kronstadt, Riga, St. Petersburg and others. In 1755, he managed the construction and maintenance of the Kronstadt Canal, at the same time founding a hospital for workers on the canal, and a little later opened a school in Kronstadt for the children of workers and craftsmen. Awarded the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky (06/30/1762). Having risen to the rank of general-in-chief, Hannibal was dismissed (1762) and died in 1781. He was buried at the Old Suydin Cemetery; the grave is lost.

Hannibal wrote memoirs in French, but destroyed them. His attitude towards serfs was unusual for that time. In 1743, leasing part of the village of Ragola to Joachim von Thieren, he included clauses in the contract prohibiting corporal punishment of serfs and increasing the established norms of corvee; When von Thieren violates these clauses, Hannibal terminates the contract in court.

Potato breeding

Hannibal’s contribution to the development of potato growing in Russia is well known. The first potato bed appeared in Russia under Peter the Great. The first Russian emperor grew potatoes in Strelna, hoping to use them as a medicinal plant. In the 1760s, Catherine II decided that the “earth apple” could be used in times of famine, and instructed Abram Hannibal, who was familiar with this crop, to start growing potatoes on his estate. Thus, the Hannibal estate “Suida” became the first place in Russia where first small and then extensive potato fields appeared, which soon moved to the territory of neighboring estates. At first, the peasants were very wary of the “earth apple,” but in some years the potato saved them from hunger, and distrust in it gradually disappeared.

Family

Abram's brother, Alexei Petrovich (named so, apparently, in honor of Tsarevich Alexei), did not make a career, served as an oboist in the Preobrazhensky regiment, was married to a serf of the exiled princes Golitsyn and was last mentioned in the late 1710s; in the Hannibal family the memory of him was not preserved, and his existence became known only from the archives of Peter the Great’s time in the 20th century.

At the beginning of 1731, Abram Hannibal married a Greek woman in St. Petersburg Evdokia Andreevna Dioper, daughter of a galley fleet officer. Married against her will, Evdokia Andreevna cheated on her husband, which, according to one version, caused persecution and torture from the deceived. According to another version, Hannibal, seeing the child - a fair-skinned and blond girl, accused his wife of treason, after which she tried to poison him with the help of conductor Shishkov. The case went to court; Shishkova was soon found guilty, and she was arrested and kept in prison for 11 years in terrible conditions. From the materials of the divorce case it follows that Hannibal “beat the unfortunate woman unusually with fatal beatings” and for many years kept her “under guard” on the verge of death from starvation.

Meanwhile, Hannibal met in Pernov with Christina-Regina von Schöberg (Christina Regina von Sjöberg), had children with her and married her in 1736 while his wife was alive, presenting a court ruling on punishment for adultery as evidence of divorce. In 1743, Evdokia, who had been released on bail, became pregnant again, after which she submitted a petition to the consistory, in which she admitted her past betrayal and herself asked to divorce her from her husband. However, the litigation with Evdokia ended only in 1753; The spouses were divorced, the wife was exiled to the Staraya Ladoga monastery, and Hannibal was imposed penance and a fine, however, recognizing the second marriage as legal and finding the military court guilty, which made a decision on the case of adultery without considering it by the Synod.

Hannibal had eleven children, but four sons (Ivan, Peter, Osip, Isaac) and three daughters (Elizabeth, Anna, Sophia) lived to adulthood; Of these, Ivan took part in a naval expedition, took Navarin, distinguished himself at Chesma, by decree of Catherine II he carried out the construction of the city of Kherson (1779), died as general-in-chief in 1801. The daughter of Hannibal’s other son, Osip, was the mother of Alexander Pushkin, who mentions his descent from Hannibal in the poems “To Yuryev,” “To Yazykov,” and “My Genealogy.”

In cinema and literature

• The life of Hannibal (with a number of literary assumptions) is told in the unfinished work of A. S. Pushkin - “The Blackamoor of Peter the Great”
• Based on this work, a film was made - “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married a Blackamoor”, the plot of which has little relation to historical reality. In the role of Hannibal - Vladimir Vysotsky.
• David Samoilov wrote the poem “The Dream of Hannibal,” which tells about the life of Hannibal in Pernov in the 30s of the 18th century.
• Mikhail Kazovsky “Lomonosov’s Heir”, historical story, 2011
• The Ballad of Bering and his friends - the role of A.P. Hannibal is performed by Ermengelt Konovalov

Abram Petrovich Hannibal - the vicissitudes of the fate of the royal arap

Whatever Russia sent us -
Live blackamoor! - so, having met Hannibal,
The town of Pernov marveled at him.
David Samoilov.
Poem "The Dream of Hannibal".

Pet and favorite of Peter I, his valet and personal secretary, who later became an outstanding Russian statesman and military figure, great-grandfather of the great poet A.S. Pushkin, chief commandant of Revel for 10 years, who spent a total of 21 years in Estonia. This is Abram Petrovich Hannibal. In 1705, the Russian envoy Savva Raguzinsky returned to Russia from Constantinople. He brought a gift to Tsar Peter I - the Arab Ibrahim, obtained in the possessions of the Turkish Sultan Ahmed III (under Peter I and later, until the end of the 19th century, all persons of African descent were called araps).

It is known that Ibrahim’s father was a prince in the northern part of Abyssinia - present-day Ethiopia. He had 30 wives and many children. 1696 is considered the most likely date of Ibrahim's birth.

During his childhood, Abyssinia was conquered by the Turks. To keep the conquered in obedience, the Turks took the sons of the nobility hostage. Ibrahim later recalled how, during his early childhood, 19 of his older brothers were taken into captivity. When Ibrahim grew up, the fate of his older brothers befell him too. The only elder sister Lagan, in her powerlessness to protect her brother, threw herself into the sea and drowned...

The king liked the smart, intelligent boy. The name Ibrahim in Arabic is nothing other than the biblical Abraham. It was transformed into the Russian way - Abram.

In July 1705, when Peter I was in Vilna (Vilnius), Ibrahim was baptized according to the Orthodox rite. Tsar Peter I became the godfather, hence the Arab's patronymic - Petrovich. This event is evidenced by a memorial plaque on the wall of the Pyatnitskaya Orthodox Church in Vilnius. On it is the text: “In this church, Emperor Peter the Great in 1705 listened to a prayer of thanks for the victory over the troops of Charles XII, gave it the banner taken from the Swedes in that victory and baptized in it the African Hannibal, the grandfather of our famous poet A.S. Pushkin” ( There are no punctuation marks in this text).

The biography of A.S. Pushkin’s great-grandfather, written in German, testifies that Ibrahim’s father, the Abyssinian prince, “proudly traced his descent in a direct line to the family of the famous Hannibal, the thunderstorm of Rome.” However, this version is not documented.

Peter I enlisted his favorite arap for military service as a drummer in the Life Guards Regiment of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, where the Tsar himself was listed as captain of a bombardment company. (The Life Guards are especially privileged troops, one of whose tasks was to protect the person of the emperor and his family). In fact, after some time, Abram, from the royal doorkeeper and errand boy, became the valet and personal secretary of Peter I.

In 1717, while in Paris, the tsar left Abram there to study military affairs: fortification, artillery, and “most importantly engineering.” Russia needed good specialists. During 5 years of study, Abram rose to the rank of captain of the French Guard, participated in the French war against Spain, and was wounded.

After returning to Russia, Abram Petrovich participated in the construction of the Kronstadt Fortress, and later became a mathematics teacher for Grand Duke Peter Alekseevich (grandson of Peter I).

The fate of the Arab changed dramatically after the death of Peter I. As a result of the palace intrigues of A.D. Menshikov, A.P. Hannibal was removed from the court, and was actually sent into exile in Siberia. It lasted three and a half years. The fact is that Abram Petrovich knew too much about the sins of His Serene Highness, about his greed and abuses, about his previous intimate relationships with Catherine.

In January 1730, 15-year-old Emperor Peter suddenly died of smallpox. II . The niece of Peter I, Anna Ioannovna, ascended the royal throne. She knew Abram from a young age and favored him. Abram was recalled from Siberia and sent to a new duty station, in Estonia, in the city of Pernov (now Pärnu).

Hannibal had already been to Estonia before. After the annexation of Estland to Russia in 1710, Peter I often visited the fortress and seaport of Revel. It is known that he visited here at least 8 times. Until 1716, Hannibal was under Peter I as a valet and personal secretary inseparably. In the bedroom of the House of Peter I in Tallinn there are still two beds, one larger for Peter, the other smaller for Abram.

After staying in St. Petersburg, Abram Petrovich met Captain Andrei Dioper, a Greek by nationality. His youngest daughter, the beautiful Evdokia, had the misfortune to please the 34-year-old bachelor A.P. Hannibal. She had a fiancé and was preparing to marry naval officer Alexander Kaisarov. Against her will, her father forced Evdokia to marry Abram. The wedding took place in January 1731. The forced marriage was a disaster for both.

The city of Pernov at that time was a fortress with walls and 7 battle towers. The number of inhabitants was about 2000 people.

Upon arrival in Pernov at the beginning of 1731, A.P. Hannibal was supposed to teach mathematics, fortification and drawing at the garrison school created by decree of Peter I in 1721, which trained junior military engineers (conductors). However, already in the fall of the same year, Abram Petrovich resigned for health reasons.

There were several reasons for this. He could have become a victim of Bironovism. The service was unprofitable. A family drama was brewing with a beautiful wife. The fact is that in the fall of 1731 Evdokia Andreevna gave birth to a white girl. Her intimate relationship was exposed on the eve of her wedding with Kaisarov. There were other suspicions as well.

The birth of a white girl to the Tsar's Arab was a sensation in the garrison and Pernov society. Abram Petrovich took all this hard. That's when he submitted his resignation and started divorce proceedings that lasted 22 years.

The fate of Evdokia Andreevna is sad and tragic. A.P. Hannibal himself “beat and tortured the unfortunate woman with fatal beatings in an unusual manner,” “threatened to kill her, Evdokia.” The military court of the Pernovsky garrison found her guilty and decided to “drive her with vines around the city, and, having driven her away, send her to the Spinning Yard, to work forever.”

She spent many years in prison houses and under guard. The final decision was made by the St. Petersburg Spiritual Consistory: to send her “to monastic labors forever,” where she ended her days. Cruel times, harsh morals, hard-hearted people decided the fate of Evdokia Andreevna, outraged her maiden beauty, woman's love and human dignity. This was the fate of many women of that time.

And Hannibal managed to marry a second time during this time. His wife was the Swede Christina Regina von Sjöberg. Her father is a nobleman, a former Swedish officer, Matthias von Sjöberg entered the Russian military service. Christina's mother is "née von Albedil." This family was one of the oldest in Livonia, having at one time migrated from Germany.

So here, in Estonia, to some extent, the rich genetic heritage of the future genius, the great-grandson of Abram Petrovich Hannibal, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, was formed.

A.P. Hannibal received his resignation in May 1733 and settled in the purchased small estate - the Karyakula manor, which is 30 km from Revel.

In 1740, a real threat of a new Russian-Swedish war arose. Field Marshal Count B.H. Minikh remembered his friend, the capable military engineer and artilleryman A.P. Hannibal. In January 1741, he was appointed chief of the artillery of the Revel fortress.
In the same year, the daughter of Peter I, Elizaveta Petrovna, ascended the royal throne. She summoned A.P. Hannibal to St. Petersburg, appointed him chief commandant of Revel with the rank of major general and royally gifted him. From the palace lands of the Pskov province, he was allocated Mikhailovskaya Bay and “six hundred and nine souls with all the lands belonging to them for eternal possession.”

The relationship between the new chief commandant and the magistrate of Revel, who had a number of privileges confirmed by Peter I, was not easy. By the way, of the 13 chief commandants of Revel in the 18th century, 10 were Germans.

However, the energetic, independent, European-educated chief commandant (from 1742 to 1752) managed to achieve complete trust in himself. The activities of the demanding and strict garrison commander benefited the city.

In 1752, Abram Petrovich was transferred to service in St. Petersburg, where he worked extensively and fruitfully as a general of staff of the corps of military engineers of Russia, and later as director of the Peter the Great canals in Kronstadt and Ladoga. There were promotions in rank: lieutenant general, and then chief general.

In the summer of 1762, after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, the new Tsar Peter III unexpectedly dismissed A.P. Hannibal from government service. He was then 66 years old.

For the last 19 years of his life, Abram Petrovich lived in the village of Suyda in peace and quiet. By this time he had become a wealthy landowner, the owner of 1,400 male serfs.

A.V. Suvorov visited him several times. A.P. Hannibal was on friendly terms with his father.

Abram Petrovich died on May 14, 1781 at the age of 84. His wife had died two months earlier.

At the burial site there is a monument with the inscription: “A.S. Pushkin’s great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Hannibal, an outstanding Russian mathematician, fortifier and hydraulic engineer, is buried here. 1697-1781.”

The second wife of A.P. Hannibal, Khristina Matveevna, gave birth to 11 children. Four died in childhood. Three sons and, apparently, the same number of daughters were born in Estland. A.S. Pushkin’s grandfather Osip Abramovich Hannibal was born in Reval.

According to A.S. Pushkin, his grandfather was the most dissolute of all the Hannibals: “...My grandfather’s African character, ardent passions, combined with terrible frivolity, drew him into amazing delusions. He married another wife, presenting a false certificate of first death." In recent years he lived in Mikhailovskoye and died in 1806 at the age of 62.

After the death of her parents, Mikhailovskoye passed to their only daughter Nadezhda Osipovna, who was already married to Sergei Lvovich Pushkin.

The descendants of this family retained some connection with Estonia. It is known that the eldest son of A.S. Pushkin, Alexander Alexandrovich Pushkin, at one time served in Narva, commanded the 13th Narva Hussar Regiment, participated in the Russian-Turkish War, was awarded all the orders of that time, with the exception of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, and had a golden saber with the inscription "For bravery". Colonel A.A. Pushkin later became a general. He was a man of high culture.

The book “Abram Petrovich Hannibal” by Tartu historian Georg Leets, published in Estonia in 1980, is dedicated to the founder of the Pushkin family, A.P. Hannibal.

In 1977, David Samoilov's poem "The Dream of Hannibal" was published in the newspaper Youth of Estonia.

The pseudonym under which the politician Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov writes. ... In 1907 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2nd State Duma in St. Petersburg.

Alyabyev, Alexander Alexandrovich, Russian amateur composer. ... A.'s romances reflected the spirit of the times. As then-Russian literature, they are sentimental, sometimes corny. Most of them are written in a minor key. They are almost no different from Glinka’s first romances, but the latter has stepped far forward, while A. remained in place and is now outdated.

The filthy Idolishche (Odolishche) is an epic hero...

Pedrillo (Pietro-Mira Pedrillo) is a famous jester, a Neapolitan, who at the beginning of the reign of Anna Ioannovna arrived in St. Petersburg to sing the roles of buffa and play the violin in the Italian court opera.

Dahl, Vladimir Ivanovich
His numerous stories suffer from a lack of real artistic creativity, deep feeling and a broad view of the people and life. Dahl did not go further than everyday pictures, anecdotes caught on the fly, told in a unique language, smartly, vividly, with a certain humor, sometimes falling into mannerism and jokeiness.

Varlamov, Alexander Egorovich
Varlamov, apparently, did not work at all on the theory of musical composition and was left with the meager knowledge that he could have learned from the chapel, which in those days did not at all care about the general musical development of its students.

Nekrasov Nikolay Alekseevich
None of our great poets has so many poems that are downright bad from all points of view; He himself bequeathed many poems not to be included in the collected works. Nekrasov is not consistent even in his masterpieces: and suddenly prosaic, listless verse hurts the ear.

Gorky, Maxim
By his origin, Gorky by no means belongs to those dregs of society, of which he appeared as a singer in literature.

Zhikharev Stepan Petrovich
His tragedy “Artaban” did not see either print or stage, since, in the opinion of Prince Shakhovsky and the frank review of the author himself, it was a mixture of nonsense and nonsense.

Sherwood-Verny Ivan Vasilievich
“Sherwood,” writes one contemporary, “in society, even in St. Petersburg, was not called anything other than bad Sherwood... his comrades in military service shunned him and called him by the dog name “Fidelka.”

Obolyaninov Petr Khrisanfovich
...Field Marshal Kamensky publicly called him “a state thief, a bribe-taker, a complete fool.”

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The Pushkin family has an ancient history, dating back to the 11th century. However, in the poet’s family it was not customary to talk about ancestors, so Alexander Sergeevich had to independently collect information about them.

“My Genealogy” by Alexander Pushkin

The poem “My Genealogy” (1830) is a unique attempt by the poet to discover for himself the world of his ancestors, as well as to understand what fate has in store for him, as the successor of a great noble family.

At the same time, Pushkin is trying to disown his noble origin: “I am not a nobleman by cross... I’m just a Russian tradesman.” Subsequently, in a letter to Benckendorff, he even calls himself a commoner.

Brief pedigree of Pushkin

The family tree of Alexander Sergeevich up to the 4th generation includes the following ancestors:

Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich
Sergei Lvovich Pushkin - father				Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkina (Hannibal) - mother
Lev Alexandrovich Pushkin - grandfather (1723-1790)		Olga Vasilievna Chicherina - grandmother (1737-1802)		Osip Abramovich Hannibal - grandfather (1744-1806)		Maria Alekseevna Pushkina - grandmother (1745-1818)
Alexander Petrovich Pushkin - great-grandfather (1686-1725)	Evdokia Ivanovna Golovina - great-grandmother (1703-1725)	Vasily Ivanovich Chicherin - great-grandfather (1700-1743)	Lukerya Vasilievna Priklonskaya - great-grandmother (1705-1765)	Abram Petrovich Hannibal - great-grandfather (1796-1781)	Christina-Regina von Sjöberg - great-grandmother (1717-1781)	Alexey Fedorovich Pushkin - great-grandfather (1717-1777)	Sarah Yuryevna Pushkina (Rzhevskaya) (1721-1790)

Abram Petrovich Hannibal (1696-1781)

Particularly active genealogy of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin begins to be studied with his great historical ancestor - Abram Petrovich Hannibal. An Arab by birth, the great-grandfather of the great poet on his mother's side. Before baptism, according to some sources, he bore the name Ibrahim. He was brought to Russia from Constantinople while still a child and presented to Emperor Peter the Great (1705-1706). The young arap became the godson of the emperor, was constantly by his side and accompanied him on all his campaigns.

Since 1717, he has been studying engineering in Paris. In 1723 he returned to Russia and entered military service. Hannibal also gives lectures, writes textbooks on fortification and geometry, runs the imperial library, etc.

However, after the death of Peter, Hannibal was sent into exile in Siberia, and in 1731 he was sent to the Baltic states. Here he settled for many years and was engaged in the construction of military fortifications and a port in the Estonian province (Estonia), and in 1742 he became the chief commandant of Revel (Tallinn).

Abram Petrovich was married twice. His first wife was Evdokia Dioper (1731), the daughter of a galley fleet captain. However, the relationship between the spouses did not work out, and the marriage did not last long. But the divorce process dragged on for many years. The spouses had no children together; accordingly, Pushkin’s pedigree is not connected with Evdokia Dioper. Moreover, after his wife was taken into custody, Hannibal was left with the little daughter of Evdokia Dioper and her lover, conductor Shishkov.

Hannibal's second wife was a German woman, Christina-Regina von Schöberg (1736), daughter of Matvey von Schöberg, captain of the Pernovsky regiment. This marriage was happy - the couple lived a long life together and died almost on the same day (according to a German biography, Christina-Regina died the day before her husband’s death). Abram Petrovich and Christina-Regina had 11 children, thanks to one of whom, Osip Abramovich, Pushkin’s family tree continued.

Osip Abramovich Hannibal (1744-1806)

The grandfather of the great poet was the third son in the family of Abram Petrovich and Christina-Regina. Osip served in the naval artillery, and having reached the rank of captain of the 2nd rank, he retired (1772). At the same time, however, he did not strive for military honors. Osip Abramovich was distinguished by his generosity and extravagance, which was the reason for his quarrel with his father. In 1773, Osip Abramovich married Maria Alekseevna Pushkina, the daughter of the former Tambov governor.

Due to the large debts that Osip Abramovich had, the couple had to sell the village in Yaroslavl district (Maria Alekseevna’s dowry) and move to live with her husband’s parents. The troubles, however, did not end there. Some time later, after the birth of his daughter Nadezhda (1755), Osip Abramovich secretly leaves his wife and settles in Mikhailovskoye. Here he resorts to deception (he declares his wife dead) and enters into a second marriage - with the landowner Ustinya Tolstoy, the widow of the captain. Along the way, the frivolous hero manages to create new debts and solve them with the help of his second wife.

However, the deception was discovered, after which complaints from both wives rained down on Osip Abramovich. At the same time, Maria Alekseevna even resorted to the patronage of Empress Catherine II. As a result, Osip Abramovich was sent to naval service in the Black Sea for 7 years (where the military events of the Russian-Turkish War were unfolding at that moment), and his second marriage was considered invalid. Accordingly, Pushkin’s pedigree was not connected with the name of Ustinya Tolstoy.

For the rest of his life, Osip Abramovich lived in Mikhailovskoye. His daughter Nadezhda, born in his first marriage, continued to be raised with her mother.

Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkina (1775-1836)

Thus, Pushkin’s genealogy continued with Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkina (nee Hannibal), the mother of the future poet. She was very pretty - in society she was called a wonderful Creole, well-read and educated. In secular society, Nadezhda Osipovna behaved easily and naturally, arousing everyone's admiration. One of the admirers of the “beautiful Creole” was Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, the future father of the great poet. Their marriage, concluded in 1796, lasted happily for 40 years, until the death of Nadezhda Osipovna.

Touching in their love for each other, the Pushkins, however, were not particularly sensitive towards their children. The style of education in the family was predominantly despotic. The relationship between mother and son, Alexander Pushkin, was difficult for a long time. In this regard, the young poet perceived his admission to the Lyceum with joy and relief rather than with sadness. However, already at a more mature age, mother and son become closer to each other. And during Pushkin’s Mikhailovsky exile, it was Nadezhda Osipovna who petitioned for her son to leave the village for treatment.

Nadezhda Osipovna was buried in the Svyatogorsk Monastery. The pedigree of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, thus, ends here. While present at the funeral, Pushkin himself expressed his desire to be buried in the future next to his mother.