The Black Researcher

  The Ukrainian Fortress City Built  By A Black Man Left: Plan of the Kherson Fortress in 1792 (Source: Wikipedia Commons ); Right: Portrait of General I.A.Hannibal - founder of the city of Kherson and the fortress  (Credit:  Kherson Guide ) Many students of Black history are familiar with the name of Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), the astronomical genius of African descent who contributed to the earliest survey for the construction of the U.S. capital in Washington, D.C. But very few are aware that there was another Black man who supervised a similar project for a city in Europe.  View of Kherson F. Ya. Alekseev (1755-1824) (Credit: Kherson Guide ) Kherson, a significant city in Southern Ukraine, was designed and co-founded by the eminent Russian general Ivan Gannibal (1735-1801). Gannibal, it seems, began his work shortly after the city was founded by General Grigory Potemkin, a favorite of Empress Catherine II. Inside the fortress walls, Gannibal include...

 The African Governor and Guardian of Estonia's Capital City Left: Portrait of Gannibal from Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine, Volume 8 (1888); Right: Engraving of Reval (Tallinn) in 1867 by Wilhelm Siegfried Stavenhagen (Source: Wikipedia Commons ) Pictured below is the house where the African prince and Russian nobleman Abraham Gannibal (c. 1696-1781) lived as the chief commandant of what is now Estonia's largest city, Tallinn. Revel (Tallinn's old name) and its fortress were established at the end of the 10th century, then taken by the Danes in the early 13th century. Later, Reval was ruled by the Germans and Swedes. Reval was then conquered by Russian emperor Peter the Great in 1710. For 10 years - from 1742 to 1752 - Gannibal served as the de-facto governor of that historic city. House of the military commander of Reval (now Tallinn) Photo by Wikipedia user Elin Galtung Lihaug The photo above was taken in 2003. As these photos show, the house received a compl...

  The African Who Measured  The Great Wall of China Left: Portrait of a young Gannibal; Right: The Great Wall of China, circa 1750, Dutch school (Source:  Leiden University Libraries ) The Cameroonian military engineer Ibrahim Gannibal (c. 1696-1781) was once instructed to measure one of the wonders of the ancient world - the Great Wall of China. Gannibal lived in Russia for most of his life. For us to understand and to truly appreciate the weight of Gannibal's accomplishment, we must first take a look at just how much the people of Europe understood about the wall. A section of the Great Wall on the Hanging Cliffs leading up to Jiayu Pass Photo by Aine Hickey (Source: Wikipedia Commons ) Although the wall was around since at least the third century B.C., no European had seen the Great Wall of China with their own eyes  until the early 1600s .  The first on record is Portuguese Jesuit Bento de Góis (1562-1607), who reached the northwestern Jiayu Pass from I...