Pushkin's African background - the Pushkins and the Gannibals
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/f ... ro/pushkinback.html
According to his son-in-law and first biographer, Abram (or Ibrahim) was the son of a ruler in Africa: possibly Chad, possibly Abyssinia. At an early age he was either abducted or sent to the court of the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople. Bought from the Sultan, Abram arrived in Russia and was baptised with Tsar Peter standing as his godfather. Peter visited France in 1717, and at the same time Abram was sent to study there. He returned with the conventional skills of an officer of artillery, but he had also acquired a new surname, Hannibal (in Russian, Gannibal), and the name had significant echoes of republican defiance. A respected military engineer, he was promoted under successive rulers and lived on into the reign of Catherine the Great. There is no reliable likeness of Gannibal. Hugh Barnes, in his book Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg (2005), has shown that this portrait, long thought to be of Gannibal, cannot be of him.
Gannibal's third son (of 11) by his second marriage Osip Abramovich married Marya Alexeevna Pushkin, and their daughter was Pushkin’s mother Nadezhda. Pushkin’s father Sergei Lvovich Pushkin came from a family of boyars (nobles) whose fortunes had declined under Peter the Great. Sergei Lvovich inherited the family estates, and had the reputation of being idle, frivolous and miserly. He was also a fluent French speaker and had a large library of French literature and philosophy, both of which offered Pushkin a solid grounding for his later education. Pushkin’s mother inherited the family estates from her father Osip, but he had left it so heavily encumbered with debt that, during her lifetime, the income went into paying it off. She was beautiful and elegant, but Pushkin was no closer to her than he was to his father.
Presumed portrait of Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696-1781), now known to be falsely attributed
British Library Ac.9088b, p.12
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是说俄国伟大的诗人，他的黑人血统来自他的母亲。。。。