Hannibal general of the Russian army. Abram from the family of Hannibals. Brief genealogy of Pushkin

ABRAM RUVIMOVICH On February 114, 1993, I visited the science fiction writer A.R. Paley in Moscow on the green Poltavskaya street (behind the Dynamo stadium). A few days later, Abram Ruvimovich turned a hundred years old. , without

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Abram Hannibal

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

Abram Petrovich Hannibal(before baptism, Ibrahim), an outstanding figure of the Peter the Great and Elizabethan eras, Pushkin's great-grandfather, was 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 ended up as a hostage in Constantinople, from where he was brought to Moscow and presented to Peter I. Peter favored him, took him everywhere with him, taught him to read and write and various sciences, and then assigned him the best teachers. Received a nickname in memory of the glorious Carthaginian Hannibal. In the Vilna church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, he converted to Orthodoxy, and the tsar himself was the recipient. 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 office, as well as the chief translator of foreign books at court; by order of the tsar, he began to teach engineering and mathematics to young officers. After Peter's death, Hannibal's long disgrace began, which ended only with the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna: in memory of her father, she generously rewarded him, granted him estates. Since that time, a new flowering of his diverse 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 head of the Russian artillery; rose to the rank of general-in-chief. According to existing tradition, the choice military career Suvorov was indebted to Hannibal, who persuaded his father to yield to his son's inclinations. Hannibal had six children by 1749. The daughter of one of his sons, Osip, later became the mother of Alexander Pushkin. Abram Petrovich spent his last years in 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 the diligence, incorruptibility of Hannibal, and the fact that he managed to become a "confidant, 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 he was baptized a year later. Since Peter I was the godfather, in Orthodoxy Ibrahim received the name Peter. Since 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 the second marriage, Osip Abramovich Hannibal was born to Gannibal - the grandfather of A. S. Pushkin on the maternal side. A. S. Pushkin dedicated the story “Arap of Peter the Great” to his great-grandfather.

Origin

In the biography of Hannibal, there is still a lot of unexplained. The son of a sovereign prince ("neger" 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's arap with the north of Ethiopia (Abyssinia).

Recent studies of the Sorbonne graduate of the Benin Slavist Dieudonné Gnammanku (the author of the book Abram Hannibal, which developed the idea of ​​Nabokov) identify his homeland as the frontier of modern Cameroon and Chad, where the Logon sultanate of the Kotoko people, who is a descendant of the Sao civilization, was located.

Biography

In the eighth year of his life, Ibrahim was abducted 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 bought 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); the godparents were Tsar Peter (who gave him both the patronymic and the surname "Petrov") and the Polish Queen Christian Ebergardina, the wife of King August II. Ibrahim received the Russified name Abram, his brother - the name Alexei. One of the plaques on the current church building. 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 "inseparably" was near the king, slept in his room, accompanied in all campaigns. In the documents, he is mentioned three times along with the jester Lacoste, but since 1714, Peter I has entrusted him with various assignments, including secret ones, he becomes the orderly and secretary of the king. In 1716 he went abroad with the sovereign. At this time, Abram received a salary of 100 rubles a year. In France, Abram Petrovich stayed to study; after spending 1.5 years in an engineering school, he entered the French army, participated 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 preferred to wear such a surname from the end of the 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 all-powerful temporary worker:

"Do not destroy me to the end ... and whom to crush such a lofty face - such a reptile and the very last creature on earth, whom the worm and grass can deprive of this light: poor, sire, unforgiving, 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 a major in the Tobolsk garrison, and in September, he was transferred as a captain to the Corps of Engineers, where Hannibal was listed until his retirement in 1733. At this time, he was sent to Pernov to teach conductors mathematics and drawing. In 1731-1735 the commandant of the Pernovsky fortified area.

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

In 1745, Hannibal was appointed to manage the delimitation of land with Sweden. Transferred in 1752 again to the Corps of Engineers, he became the manager of the Engineering Department of all of Russia, supervised the construction of the fortifications of the Tobolo-Ishim line, as well as Kronstadt, Riga, in St. Petersburg and others. In 1755, he manages the construction and maintenance of the Kronstadt Canal, at the same time establishing a hospital for workers on the canal, and a little later he opens a school in Kronstadt for the children of workers and craftsmen. He was 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; grave is lost.

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

Potato cultivation

Hannibal's contribution to the development of potato growing in Russia is known. The first bed with potatoes 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 famine years, and instructed Abram Hannibal, who was familiar with this culture, to start growing potatoes on his estate. Thus, the Hannibal estate "Suyda" became the first place in Russia where first small, and then vast potato fields appeared, which soon moved to the territory of neighboring estates. The peasants at first were very wary of the "earth apple", but in some years the potato saved from hunger, and distrust of him gradually disappeared.

Family

Abram's brother, Alexei Petrovich (apparently named after Tsarevich Alexei), did not make a career; in the Hannibal family, the memory of him was not preserved, and his existence became known only from the archives of Peter the Great in the 20th century.

At the beginning of 1731, Abram Hannibal married a Greek woman in St. Evdokia Andreevna Dioper, daughter of an officer of the galley fleet. Having married against her will, Evdokia Andreevna cheated on her husband, which, according to one version, caused persecution and torture by the deceived. According to another version, Hannibal, seeing a 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 matter went to court; Shishkov was soon found guilty, but she was arrested and imprisoned for 11 years in appalling conditions. From the materials of the divorce case, it follows that Hannibal "beat the unfortunate woman with mortal beatings unusually" and for many years kept her "under guard" on the verge of death from starvation.

Meanwhile, Hannibal met in Pernov with Christina-Regina von Sjoberg (Christina Regina von Sjoberg), had children with her and married her in 1736 with a living wife, presenting as evidence of a divorce a court order on punishment for adultery. In 1743, Evdokia, released on bail, became pregnant again, after which she filed a petition with the consistory, in which she recognized her past betrayal and herself asked to divorce her from her husband. However, the lawsuit with Evdokia ended only in 1753; the spouses were divorced, the wife was exiled to the Staraya Ladoga monastery, and penance and a fine were imposed on Hannibal, however, recognizing the second marriage as legal and finding guilty the military court, which ruled 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 (Elizaveta, Anna, Sophia) survived to adulthood; of these, Ivan participated in a naval expedition, took Navarin, distinguished himself near Chesma, under the decree of Catherine II, he carried out the construction of the city of Kherson (1779), died as an in-chief general in 1801. The daughter of another son of Hannibal, Osip, was the mother of Alexander Pushkin, who mentions his origin from Hannibal in the poems: “To Yuryev”, “To Yazykov” and “My family tree”.

In film and literature

• The life of Hannibal (with a number of literary assumptions) is described in the unfinished work of A. S. Pushkin - “Arap of Peter the Great”
• Based on this work, a film was made - “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Married”, the plot of which has little to do with 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 "Heir of Lomonosov", historical story, 2011
• Ballad about 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

What Russia did not send us -
Alive arap! - so, having met Hannibal,
He marveled at the town of Pernov.
David Samoilov.
Poem "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 - Ibrahim's arap, mined in the possessions of the Turkish Sultan Ahmed III (by arap under Peter I and later, before late XIX century, called all people of African descent).

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 probable 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. The only native older sister Lagan, in her impotence to protect her brother, threw herself into the sea and drowned ...

Smart, intelligent boy liked the king. Ibrahim's name Arabic none other than the biblical Abraham. It was transformed into a 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 patronymic of the arap - 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 thanksgiving for the victory over the troops of Charles XII, gave her the banner taken away 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 the great-grandfather A.S. Pushkin, written in German, testifies that Ibrahim's father, the Abyssinian prince, "proudly traced his origin in a straight line to the family of the famous Hannibal, the thunderstorm of Rome." However, this version is not documented.

Peter the Great enrolled his favorite arap on military service drummer of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, where the tsar himself was listed as the 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, becomes the valet and personal secretary of Peter I.

In 1717, while in Paris, the tsar leaves Abram there to study military affairs: fortification, artillery, "most importantly, engineering." Russia needed good specialists. For 5 years of study, Abram rose to the rank of captain of the French guard, participated in the war of France against Spain, was wounded.

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

The fate of the arap 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 in fact sent into exile, to Siberia. It lasted three and a half years. The fact is that Abram Petrovich knew too much about the sins of the Most Serene Prince, about his greed and abuse, about his former intimate relations 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 place of service, in Estonia, in the city of Pernov (now Pärnu).

Hannibal had already been to Estonia before. After annexing Estonia to Russia in 1710, Peter I often visited the fortress and the seaport of Revel. He is known to have been here at least 8 times. Until 1716, Hannibal was with Peter I as a valet and personal secretary inseparably. There are still two beds in the bedroom of Peter the Great's House in Tallinn, one larger for Peter, the other smaller for Abram.

After staying in St. Petersburg, Abram Petrovich met a Greek by nationality, captain Andrei Dioper. His youngest daughter, the beautiful Evdokia, had the misfortune to please the 34-year-old bachelor A.P. Hannibal. She had a fiance, and she 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 misfortune for both.

The city of Pernov at that time was a fortress with fortress 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 in the garrison school created by decree of Peter I in 1721, which trained junior military engineers (conductors). However, already in the autumn of the same year, Abram Petrovich resigned for health reasons.

There were several reasons for this. He could become a victim of Bironism. 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 the wedding with Kaisarov. There were other suspicions as well.

The birth of a white girl from the royal black was a sensation in the garrison and Pernovsky society. Abram Petrovich was very worried about all this. It was then that he submitted his resignation and started a divorce process that lasted 22 years.

The fate of Evdokia Andreevna is sad and tragic. A.P. Hannibal himself "beat and tortured the unfortunate woman with mortal beatings in an unusual way", "threatened to kill her, Evdokia." The military court of the Pernovsky garrison found her guilty and decided "to drive around the city with vines, 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 Ecclesiastical Consistory: to send her "to the monastic labors forever," where she ended her days. Cruel times, harsh morals, hard-hearted people decided the fate of Evdokia Andreevna, outraged her girlish beauty, women's love and human dignity. Such was the fate of many women of that time.

And Hannibal during this time managed to marry a second 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 migrated from Germany at one time.

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

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

In 1740 there was a real threat of a new Russian-Swedish war. Field Marshal Count B.Kh. Minich remembered his friend, a capable military engineer and artilleryman A.P. Hannibal. In January 1741, he was appointed head of the artillery of the Revel fortress.
In the same year, the daughter of Peter I, Elizabeth 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 gave him royal gifts. From the palace lands of the Pskov province, he was allocated Mikhailovskaya Bay and "six hundred and nine souls with all their lands in 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, out of 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 confidence in himself. The activities of the demanding and strict head of the garrison benefited the city.

In 1752, Abram Petrovich was transferred to serve in St. Petersburg, where he worked a lot 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 the ranks: lieutenant general, and then general-general.

In the summer of 1762, after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, the new Tsar Peter III unexpectedly dismissed A.P. Hannibal from public 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 serf souls.

A.V. Suvorov visited him repeatedly. 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 place there is a monument with the inscription: "A.S. Pushkin's great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Gannibal, 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. In Estonia, 3 sons were born and, apparently, the same number of daughters. In Reval, the grandfather of A.S. Pushkin, Osip Abramovich Gannibal, was born.

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

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

Some connection with Estonia was preserved by the descendants of this family. It is known that the eldest son of A.S. Pushkin, Alexander Alexandrovich Pushkin, once served in Narva, commanded the 13th Narva Hussars, 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, 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 the Tartu historian Georg Leetz, published in Estonia in 1980, is dedicated to the ancestor of the Pushkin family, A.P. Hannibal.

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

According to the family legend of the Hannibals - Pushkins, skillfully processed by Alexander Sergeevich, Abram (or Abraham) Hannibal lived for more than ninety years. During such a long life, he changed his religion twice, his name three times, his last name twice. He moved easily and quickly throughout Europe, but only by dry route, as he did not tolerate sea travel well. He moved much more slowly across Russia, but the distances are incomparable with European ones. He studied a lot, read and spoke several languages, knew mathematics and military engineering. He bore the unofficial title of "confidant" of Peter the Great. He was approached and exiled, and again treated kindly and approached.

It seemed that with such a biography, the figure of Hannibal in the history of Russia in the 18th century should be written out clearly and tangibly, but this is far from being the case. The origin, life and even death of Abram Hannibal are solid historical mysteries.

Sources about the origin of Abram Petrovich are mostly subjective. Being already an old man, he wrote notes about his life, which could have become a valuable source on history, but the notes have not been preserved. Pushkin reports this: “Under Peter III, he retired ... he used to write his notes in French, but in a fit of panic fear to which he was subject, he ordered them to be burned along with other precious papers.”

It is assumed that Hannibal's fear is connected with possible repressions by His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov, who was afraid of Hannibal's influence on Peter II. Hannibal taught the future emperor the exact military engineering sciences.

However, Abram Petrovich did not write notes under Peter III, having retired, but much earlier, when, with the help of Minikh, he was returned from Siberia and hid, according to A.S. Pushkin, in the Revel village, and according to the author of the German biography of Hannibal - in the Pernovskaya fortress. And they could well have burned out, and Hannibal could and should have been afraid of their publication, because over time they could convict the old general of inventions and stretches that turned into facts of his biography.

What could a five-six-year-old boy know about his origin? Only what adults forced him to memorize. Only one person could be such an adult, thanks to whom little Abram ended up at the court of the Russian emperor, Savva Vladislavich Raguzinsky. The personality is mysterious and extremely interesting. He is a successful merchant, diplomat, polyglot, agent who worked for the governments of various countries, including the Russian one. He invented the legend, proceeding from the opposite, based on the essence of the task that he received. The essence of the task is concisely and briefly described in the book “Guide to Pushkin. SPb., 1997”: “Abram (Peter) Petrovich, before baptism, Ibrahim (Pushkin’s great-grandfather) was born in 1697–1698. in northern Abyssinia, where his father was a sovereign prince. As a result of the order of Peter I to get him several Arap boys, he was brought by Count S.V. Raguzinsky to Moscow, brought to Peter and baptized in the name of Peter ... "

Peter did not ask to bring him blacks. It was about ugly, dark-skinned, but prone to science boys who would serve as a black man at the king's court.

For the first time, Abram Petrovich spoke about his origin from Africa at the beginning of 1742, when he wrote a petition to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna with a request to grant him a letter of nobility and a coat of arms. In support of the request, he mentions not only his merits and rank - major general, but also gives a brief version of his origin: “I come from the lowest of Africa, the local noble nobility. I was born in the possession of my father in the city of Lagon, which, moreover, had two cities under it; in 706 I left for Russia from Tsaryagrad under Count Savva Vladislavich, by my will, in my early years and brought to Moscow to the house of the blessed and eternally worthy memory of the Sovereign Emperor Peter the Great and baptized into the Orthodox, Greek confession; and His Imperial Majesty, the highest person, deigned to be present as a successor; and from that time was inseparable from His Imperial Majesty.

Abram makes a theoretical justification for granting him and his children hereditary nobility, as was the custom under Peter when genealogical books were compiled. Pedigrees were checked purely formally. Naturally, everyone tried to make his family as ancient as possible, and it was imperative that some foreigner gave the beginning of the family. It was fashion. And in the 18th century, the data of genealogical books became a fact.

Why did Hannibal mention that the city of Lagon "had two cities under it"? Abram Petrovich turned out to be an ambitious man. He claimed not only for hereditary nobility, but also for the princely title.

Hopes were not destined to come true. Hannibal was refused. And the refusal sounded at the highest level. Neither ranks nor awards helped. Arap could not do anything "by his own will." Elizabeth understood this. Arap is the position of a bonded person. Many nobles had araps in their homes, but none of them claimed the title of nobleman. Proximity to the king and foreign education did not give rights to the nobility. Arap can be as close to his master as he likes, but remains a servant. The stories of Abram Petrovich about his noble African origin are not taken for granted. They knew their value. A wise decision was made - not to give Hannibal a refusal, but not to give a move to the case. So it ended up in the archive. This is how Hannibal and his children lived, not as nobles and not commoners, not as philistines and not serfs.

Only after the death of Hannibal did his children receive a certificate of nobility. In 1804, the Pskov noble assembly "... decided and introduced Major General Peter and Joseph Gannibalov in the first place of the noble genealogy book with the issuance of a letter." At the same time, it was noted that their origin is "shrouded in obscurity." Thus, at the time of the birth of A.S. Pushkin, his mother Nadezhda Osipovna (Iosifovna) and all Hannibal's relatives were not nobles.

It is very difficult to separate the inventions of Abram Petrovich from the later inventions of Rotkirch. But there is one place in the biography where the hand of Rotkirch is clearly felt. He decided to touch on the most painful issue for Abram Petrovich about the documentary substantiation of his claims to the princely title. To do this, in the text of his father-in-law's biography, he introduces a new actor: a certain half-brother ruling a principality in Abyssinia, who tried to find his brother and ransom him from captivity. "At that time, - Rotkirch writes, - his ruling brother, I think, prompted by the then still living mother of this European Hannibal, on the assumption that this half-brother was still in Constantinople as a hostage, wanted to ransom him through others and entrusted the execution of this to one of his younger brothers; the latter set off in the footsteps of the new Joseph who had been taken away; (at first he was looking for him in Istanbul), and then he was in St. Petersburg (where he hoped to ransom him for a large sum and take him with him). However, it was impossible to return to paganism and barbarism such a promising young man, who already felt himself a convinced Christian; accustomed to the European way of life, he himself did not show a desire to return, this harassing brother was denied his request, then, having presented his younger brother with valuable weapons and Arabic manuscripts relating to their origin, he left for his homeland, not having achieved his goal with great grief on both sides.

A fragment of the biography is replete with inconsistencies. How could Abram's brother trace his path from Istanbul to Petersburg? For example, in the seraglio of the Sultan, he was told that the boy was stolen by unknown persons. Where to look next? The performers probably did not know the customers. Between them there could be a number of intermediaries. Suppose that somehow Abram's brother managed to find out that the prisoner had been taken to Petersburg. He arrives in the capital of Russia, goes to the palace to the king and offers money for his brother. Incredible!

These fables were written for only one purpose. It is necessary to prove that Abram Petrovich had documents giving the right to a princely title. Judging by the text of the biography, such an attempt was made by Hannibal himself at the time when Rotkirch entered his family. “Much later, already in our recent time, the late ancestor of the now existing Hannibal family in Europe wanted to claim the renewal of the princely title, relying on his birth from princely ancestors, according to these documents and evidence; however, his eldest son, lieutenant general and cavalier Ivan Abramovich Gannibal, advised him of this enterprise on the basis of the argument that princely dignity also requires a princely state.

The author of the biography calls Hannibal "the new Joseph", comparing the sale of the biblical Joseph, who ended up in Egypt, with the fate of Abram Hannibal, who was brought to Russia. There is indeed a similarity: both were sold and resold, both remembered their relatives and their homeland, both reached a high position in the country where they found themselves. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin subtly caught one feature of his great-grandfather’s biography: his personality is of interest and weight for history only if Peter I is near and above him. sovereign during this period. There were indeed many of them, and many bore the name Abram.

In 1698, Peter I went on his first trip to Europe. His favorite Lefort, in a letter dated February 8, reminded: "Please do not forget to buy Arabi." By March 25, Peter apparently complied with Lefort's request.

Savva Vladislavich Raguzinsky was actively engaged in staging the blacks for Russian nobles. At the same time, no one ever stole children. There was a developed slave market, where it was easy to get the right child. On November 15, 1704, the translator of the order, Nikolai Gavrilovich Milescu-Spafariy, reported to the manager of the order, Count Fyodor Alekseevich Golovin: “My dear sir, my boyar Fedor Alekseevich. Before his departure from Constantinople on June 21, Mr. Savva Raguzinsky wrote to me that, on the orders of your magnificence, he provided with great fear and apprehension of his life from the Turks two blacks, and the third to Ambassador Pyotr Andreevich, and those blacks sent with a man his own dry way through Multyanskaya and Voloskaya lands for salvation. And now, sir, on November 13, that man Savin arrived with those blacks to Moscow intact, and from those three he chose two who are better and more skillful than his brothers, and gave them to your most pure house to your most pure lady mother and your most noble children , and left the third, which was worse, to Pyotr Andreevich, because Mr. Savva also wrote to me, and his man said that he was unfit.

The smaller of them was baptized with the name Avram from the nephew of the ruler of Multyansk, and the larger one was still in infidelity ...

And all the goods of Savina came to Azov intact with his little nephew, but how will they be here, what is due to your magnificence, we will choose and give ... "

Is it possible to consider the black man, sent to Count Apraksin by Savva and named Abram, the future Abram Petrovich Hannibal? No, for two reasons: the boy had already been baptized on his way to Moscow, and we know that Peter I himself baptized Abram Petrovich in Vilna; the real Abram arrived in Moscow with Savva Raguzinsky's nephew. When Raguzinsky arrived in Azov, where his goods and his little nephew were waiting, Peter the Great issued a decree to get him more black sheep. He took his nephew, joined him with two other boys and sent him to Moscow. As an accompanying document, a legend went with them that Savva stole two Arabchats from the Sultan's seraglio, and one of them was the son of an Abyssinian prince.

This could have happened in the spring or summer of 1705. How old is Hannibal? Scholars place his year of birth between 1695 and 1698. “The advantage is in 1696, which we consider the most probable year of birth of great-grandfather A.S. Pushkin,” said Georg Leetz.

Data from the biography of Abram Petrovich are superimposed on episodes from the biographies of other Araps named Abram. In I. Feinberg's book "Abram Petrovich Hannibal, Pushkin's great-grandfather", as an illustration, there is a photo of the title of the book, where it is written in German in beautiful large handwriting: "Abraham Petrovich, Moscow, 1711". It is hard to believe that at the age of 14-15 Abram Petrovich had his own library and wrote excellent German. Probably, we are talking about another Abraham. It is quite possible that what is mentioned in the tsar's income and expenditure book: "1705 on February 18, Abram arap was given a uniform for business and 15 rubles 15 altyn in the butt." Too much for the uniform of a nine-year-old boy. Most likely, the book belonged to that black man Abram, who went to study in France a few years earlier than Abram Petrovich.

From his own biography, the episode with the war for the Spanish succession passed into the biography of Hannibal. From the German biography of Hannibal: “... promoted from there to an artillery officer, he then participated in the War of the Spanish Succession in all campaigns with the rank of artillery captain, then he was also used in engineering in mine galleries, participated here in underground battles; at the same time he was once badly wounded in the head and eventually taken prisoner.

This war began in 1700. It ended with the signing of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) peace treaties. Abram Petrovich could not have time to participate in it. He arrived in France only in 1717 in the retinue of Peter I. Consequently, another person participated in the war, who was wounded and taken prisoner. After disappeared. Hannibal added the fact of his biography to his own and became a hero of the Spanish War. It should be noted that in his address to Catherine I and Elizabeth Petrovna, he never mentions this. It appears only in the biography written by Rotkirch.

Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, poet's father

Fragments of the biography, where the author claims: “Emperor Peter the Great was pleased to see the growing success of his godson in knowledge and science; for improvement, according to the circumstances of that time, he sent him with a significant scholarship and special recommendations to the then regent of France, the Duke of Orleans, with an ardent request to take over the supervision of him ... "

There was no special scholarship. Abram received one hundred and forty efimki a year. Moreover, he, like other students, received a salary in paper money, which, due to inflation, fell sharply in price. Abraham was starving. This intolerable situation prompted him to join the French service. In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Makarov, he justifies his action by the fact that in 1720 they created a school of young engineers, in which foreigners were not accepted, except for those who served in the French army. In fact, Abram became a mercenary. It is very likely that the demand to come to Russia was made after receiving the news of this.

Apparently, Abram Petrov decided to become a defector. He in every possible way delays the time of departure to Russia. Makarov sends a letter demanding that he immediately leave by sea for Russia. Abram excuses himself: “... I ask you,” he writes, “my sovereign, to report to his majesty that I am not a sea man ... My death will if they don’t show God’s mercy over me ... If the imperial majesty does not grant anything, how would I get to Petersburg by land, then I’m glad and ready to go on foot ... "

The cunning Abram Petrov knows that Peter does not rush with money, he is extremely tight-fisted.

Abram spent another year in France. But the St. Petersburg cunning nevertheless found a way to return the shrew: if you don’t want to go by sea yourself, you will go with the embassy of Prince Dolgorukov.

In the spring of 1723 Abram left France. Further, according to the text of the “German Biography”: “Having received the news of his approach, the sovereign with his wife, Empress Catherine, went to meet him from St. scorer company of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment; in the latter, every reigning monarch is always himself a captain, and therefore Hannibal, in his position, had a daily sure occasion to often speak with his captain without a preliminary report.

Pushkin in the novel "Arap of Peter the Great" creatively processed this moment. Peter I not only went out to meet his godson, but also waited for him in the tavern “since yesterday.”

Almost everything here is fiction. The emperor received news not of the approach of his former black man, but of the arrival of the embassy, ​​and indeed went out to meet him. The chamber junker Berchholtz wrote about this as follows: “On May 25 ... the sovereign went to meet two gentlemen, namely Prince Dolgorukov and Count Golovkin, who arrived from Berlin. The first was out of Russia for 15, and the last for 16 years. Dolgoruky was an ambassador to the Danish and French courts... They sat with the emperor in a carriage and were met by him a few miles from the city.

The former favorite was not found ... a place next to the emperor, and this is quite understandable, given that the number of favorite orderlies with Peter was so large that he most likely did not remember them.

Abram Petrovich was sent to the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Of course, he did not become a lieutenant commander and did not have the opportunity to meet and talk with the emperor daily. His ambition is wounded.

Very soon he got tired of teaching the "architecture of militaris" to stupid non-commissioned officers. He decided to remind himself by sending Catherine I a handwritten copy of his book Geometry and Fortification. In a short dedication, Abram Petrov carefully alludes to those chapters of the biography that could not be verified: he was baptized in Vilna in 1705, the godfather is Tsar Peter himself. Left personally by the Emperor in Paris, recommended to Duke du Maine, Prince of the Blood...

Catherine did not disregard this appeal and appointed Abram Petrovich as a mathematics teacher to Peter II.

The clever and cunning black man could not, of course, get along at court with the all-powerful Menshikov. After the accession to the throne of Peter II, the unfortunate mathematics teacher went on a business trip to Selenginsk, where, by a strange coincidence, he met with Count Savva Raguzinsky. If you remember, it was this man who came up with the first strokes of the legendary biography of Hannibal, which is presented in the most concise and complete form in the academic publication Pushkin Guide, published in 1931.

By that time, a substantial flow of funds was flowing through Savva, directed to bribe Turkish officials. Turkey's foreign policy in the Black Sea region and the Balkans largely depends on his activities. Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy values ​​his agent very much, rightly believing that he is "... highly skilled and knows many secret things," and besides, incredibly stingy.

The main trade routes of Raguzinsky passed through Little Russia and Azov. On July 1, 1703, Savva addresses a petition to Peter I and almost two years later receives, saying modern language, a license for free trade through Azov, where he is granted the highest permission to have a house and a shop. Even when Azov was Turkish, Savva probably had a letter from the Sultan and also had a house with a shop, but the power changed, he had to go to the service of the Russian Tsar.

Through Azov and Savva Raguzinsky, the path went to Constantinople, and to the Balkans, and to central and southern Europe.

And now Savva receives an order to bring the Arapchats for the king. Will this experienced and cautious person endanger his life, fortune and career and steal from the Sultan's seraglio of the Arapchat boys? The Russian government would never agree to this either. Savva could receive such an order only as an addition to intelligence work, and he did not have to risk anything, and this is possible only if Savva had extensive experience in the trade in live goods.

Ten years before the appearance of the boy Abram in Russia, Peter I was brought a dark-skinned little black boy, who was baptized with the name Alexei and patronymic Petrovich. Subsequently, it turned out that Alexei Petrovich was the brother of Abram Petrovich. The same family, ten years apart, gave the Russian Tsar two brothers. This is only possible if there was only one supplier of the Arapchat boys - Savva Raguzinsky.

There were three main requirements for boys: they must be swarthy, ugly and intellectually developed. The first two did not present any difficulties - in any market from Constantinople to the Crimea and Azov one could buy swarthy and not very beautiful boys, but how to determine that this child is capable of science? The easiest and surest way is to choose a child from among your own, especially if it is known in advance that he will end up at the court of the Russian Tsar. Savva could only have such “his own” environment in Azov. Not without reason, together with Abram, he brought his nephew to Moscow.

Most likely, Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy was mistaken when he called Savva "a breed of Raguzenin." National affiliation is somewhat manifested in the name: Savva is a truncated form from the Hebrew Var-Sava, "righteous." The name of Bar-Saba was called the biblical Joseph.

Therefore, the real name of Savva is Joseph from Azov. It is generally accepted that the toponym Azov comes from the ethnonym Asy or Alans - nomadic tribes that lived in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e. It seems that this is another historical mistake. What cities can nomads have? The name comes from a proper name: Azov - the replacement of the vowel in with f - Azef. Further, the closely related Syrian Yusef, the Polish Yuzef, and at the core the same biblical Joseph. Azov is the city of the righteous Joseph. Savva (Joseph) comes from the city of Joseph.

During the capture of Azov by Russian troops in July 1796, the question arose about the “Ohreyans”. So they called schismatics in Rus'. A colony of Ohreyans lived under the Turks in Azov. When the city was surrendered, it was agreed that those Ohreans who converted to Islam would leave with the Turks. It is hard to imagine that we are talking about Russian schismatics. Orthodox schismatics went to death for their faith, in accordance with the teaching of one of their leaders, Archpriest Avvakum: "Violent death for faith is desirable."

Possibly, the term “Ochreians” in Azov meant the Jewish schismatics (minim), who received the name Karaites (“scribes”). A colony of Karaite Jews appeared in the Sea of ​​Azov under the Khazars. In the 7th-10th centuries AD. in the lower reaches of the Don was the city of Sarkel (Russian version of Belaya Vezha) - the capital Khazar Khaganate. The settlements of the Karaites not only organically entered the structure of the Khaganate, but also influenced the political and spiritual life of the state and society so strongly that Judaism became the official religion of the Khazars.

The Khaganate disappeared from the political scene, but the settlements of the Karaites remained. They stretched from Azov through the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov to the Crimea, where Karaite communities existed for centuries in Feodosia, Bakhchisarai, Chufut-Kale (Jewish Fortresses). Trade routes connected the Azov Karaites with the whole world, where their co-religionists lived. The head of the Karaites, Nazi (Prince), later Gaham, had a residence in Cairo. The last Cairo haham, Yeshua Ben Baruch, lived in the middle of the 18th century.

Trade routes connected the Azov Karaites with Spain. It is likely that there were connections with Abyssinia. The stories about these countries were known to the Azov Karaites in the 18th century. Savva Raguzinsky creatively applied them to the biography of little Abram. Why did the Abyssinian legend become the basis of the biography of Abram Hannibal? Savva only played along with Peter I, knowing his interest in this country. In any case, the appearance at court of a little Abyssinian prince could interest Peter.

Could a Jewish boy pass for a swarthy black man? Among the Jews, anthropologists note significant fluctuations in skin pigmentation: from white to swarthy and almost black. A hundred years ago, Dr. Trivus, who studied this subject, wrote: "The Spanish Sephardim and Dutch Jews are a pure Semitic type, long-headed, oblong face, dark complexion."

A.S. Pushkin. Engraving by E. Geitman. 1822

Lithuanian Karaites have since become known as Trokian, and Crimean and Azov - Tauride. The links between these branches have never been interrupted. Among the Karaites, it was constantly supported high level spirituality and secular education. When the gahams of the Karaite communities in the Crimea and the Sea of ​​Azov felt that the intellectual level of the Tauride Karaites had dropped to a critical, from their point of view, line, then at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries, learned Karaites from Lutsk and Trok were invited.

Savva Raguzinsky was also close to the Karaite intellectual elite. It was from this environment that the boy Abram was taken to be sent to Peter. The emperor liked the boy, but he did not want to accept a new Christian name. I had to come to terms with the amazing stubbornness of my godson and the highest permission to continue to be called Abram. Abram had a clear penchant for biblical names. All his sons wore exclusively biblical names. And this is no coincidence. ancient name Karaites Bene Mikra and Baale Mikra means "Bibles".

As Georg Leetz rightly noted, Abram Petrovich Petrov turned into Abram Petrovich Hannibal only in 1732, when he acquired the Karjakyula manor near Revel from Admiral Golovin.

For a landowner in the Baltics, the surname was obligatory, but the surname Petrov does not sound. Then the name Hannibal was born. Leets believes that the idea of ​​using it originated with Abram Petrovich during his stay in France.

I believe that this name was with Abram from birth. Hannibal is the most common Punic name. It translates as "God is merciful to me." The tradition of giving children double names is very widespread among many peoples of antiquity. The system of double names - one for official use, and the second, secret, having a spiritual meaning, exists among the Karaites today.

During a meeting with Count Raguzinsky in Selenginsk, Abram Petrovich could well have learned about the existence of a middle name.

The intellectual inclinations of Abram Petrovich Hannibal manifested themselves in full force in his great-grandson Alexander Pushkin, and only for this reason we are obliged to critically check every fact and every legend in the biography of his ancestor.

The anthropological study of the physical appearance of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin has practically not moved a single step over the past hundred years, when D.N. Anuchin wrote that the anthropological study of Pushkin "is essential". The researchers shyly avoided this question. Ilya Feinberg in his work Reading Pushkin's Notebooks (Moscow, 1985) confines himself to vague discussions about the complex Semitic-Hamitic mixture that formed in medieval Abyssinia. D.N. Anuchin was more definite: "... a certain Semitic tinge was inherent in Pushkin's physical type." A well-known anthropologist makes a bold statement: “It is also impossible to ignore the fact that both during the life of Pushkin and in modern times individuals who were considered to be the most similar to Pushkin in terms of their hair and face, usually turned out to be Jews, ”and suggests continuing the study of portraits and the death mask of Pushkin. But this is a dead end method. You need to study the remains of the poet and his relatives, especially Abram Hannibal.

The type of hair and type of face is a physiological memory. Pushkin was curly and reddish. Pushkin's son Alexander was also red. Did the "Arap of Peter the Great" have red hair?

There is also historical memory. It seems that the memory of Pushkin's origin through his great-grandfather Abram Gannibal was alive not so long ago. S. Stanislavsky in the article “On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of A.S. Pushkin" wrote: "... despite the great Russian poet's obvious dislike for the descendants of Israel, Pushkin enjoys rare popularity among the Jews, so that during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, as we positively know, in one of the southern Jewish communities, he a memorial service was served. Notice, not in all Jewish communities, not in several, but only in one.

Recognizing great-grandfather A.S. Pushkin as a Karaite, I, of course, do not want to say that from that moment Pushkin ceases to be a Russian poet. He was, is and will be Russian poet, but in his physical type signs of several races and peoples are combined, including the Karaites.