Abram Petrovich Gannibal

Abram Petrovich Gannibal
Abram Gannibal, bust in Petrovskoe.
Born	1696 Logone-Birni, modern-day Cameroon
Died	May 14, 1781(1781-05-14) (aged 85) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Nationality	Russian
Other names	Petrov Hannibal
Signature

Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, or Abram Hannibal or Abram Petrov (Russian: Абра́м Петро́вич Ганниба́л; 1696 – 14 May 1781), was a Russian nobleman, military engineer and general. Kidnapped as a child and presented as a gift to Peter the Great, he was raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson. Gannibal eventually rose to become a prominent member of the imperial court in the reign of Peter's daughter Elizabeth. He is a great-grandfather of the author and poet Alexander Pushkin.

The main reliable accounts of Gannibal's life come from Peter the Great's Negro, Pushkin's unfinished biography of his great-grandfather, published after Pushkin's death in 1837. Scholars argue that Pushkin's account may be inaccurate due to the author’s desire to elevate the status of his ancestors and family. There are a number of contradictions between the biographies of Pushkin and the German novel, The of Peter the Great based on his great-grandfather. An ahistorical biography by Gannibal's son-in-law Rotkirkh was largely responsible for the myth, propagated by some earlier historians, that Gannibal was born in a part of what was then the Ethiopian Empire. However, early 21st-century research by the scholars Dieudonné Gnammankou and Hugh Barnes has conclusively established that the late general was born in Central Africa, in an area bordering Lake Chad in present-day Cameroon.

Born in Logone-Birni, Cameroon in 1696, Gannibal was kidnapped at the age of seven (circa 1703), and taken to the court of the Ottoman Sultan at Constantinople. Based on the year, the Sultan was either Mustafa II (reigned 1695–1703) or Ahmed III (reigned 1703–1730). The German biography of Gannibal, compiled anonymously from his own words, explains that "the children of the noble families were taken to the ruler of all the Muslims, the Ottoman sultan, as hostages" to be killed or sold into slavery if their fathers "misbehaved".