Was Abraham Gannibal Really A Black African?

Left: 1888 drawing of Abraham Gannibal speaking with Alexander Suvorov;
Right: signature of 'Ganibal' in letter from the Tallinn City Archive in Estonia
(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

It was long believed that the ancestor of Russia's greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin, was a "Caucasian" man from North Africa. After the death of Abraham Gannibal in 1781, a portrait of General Ivan Muller-Sakomelsky (1725-1790), commonly mistaken for an image of Gannibal, further advanced this theory.

Portrait of Alexey Wolfe
1830s
(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

 

Even Pushkin's close friend, Alexei Nikolaevich Wulf (1805-1881), hinted in his diary that Pushkin himself believed his great grand-father came to Russia from Abyssinia (a kingdom in modern-day Ethiopia). This knowledge of Gannibal's birthplace was based on the earliest biography of Gannibal, written by his son-in-law, Adam Karpovich Rotkirkh, around the 1780s.

Yet, in his biographical novel The Moor of Peter the Great (1827), Puskin wrote that Gannibal did not actually fit in with the general population of Europe. Pushkin described Gannibal as having a 'curly head, blackened among the powdered wigs.' As 'a young Negro,' Gannibal understood his lot well and came to develop a great disdain for the patronizing attitudes of the White populace. 

Today, we know that Gannibal was indeed a Black African. This fact has never been brought to the attention of the Black world with a greater exigency. Thanks to the work of Pan-African scholars like Runoko Rashidi, those who are invested in research about the greatest figures in the history of the African diaspora will - no doubt - have learned the names Gannibal and Pushkin.

But as with most claims by proponents of Pan-African scholarship, there has been pushback against the notion that Gannibal was both Black and African. At the forefront of this campaign in our time is a writer from London named Frances Somers-Cocks.

Portrait of Dimitri Anuchin
From История Академии наук СССР
(History of the USSR Academy of Sciences)(1964)
(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Dieudonné Gnammankou, in his 1996 book Abraham Hannibal: Pushkin's Black Ancestor, disputed claims by Russian journalist Dmitri Anuchin (1843-1923) that Gannibal could have come from the horn of Africa. Instead, he believed that the more likely option was Cameroon. The reason was that Gannibal wrote a letter to Empress Elizabeth saying that his homeland was a place called "Lagon." To Gnammankou, this was almost certainly Logone, the capital of the ancient Kotoko kingdom of what is now Logone-Birni. 

When she read Gnammankou's book, Frances Somers-Cocks, a high school teacher, vehemently disagreed with him, writing for The Anglo-Ethiopian Society's Spring 2006 newsletter:

He is just as passionate in his determination to make Hannibal a true Negro as Anuchin was to make him anything but!

British journalist Hugh Barnes followed in Gnammankou's direction, traveling to Logone-Birni just south of Lake Chad to see what he believed was Gannibal's birthplace for himself. He asked the local sultan, Mahamat Bahat Marouf (also a possible relative of Gannibal), to translate an inscription on a crest that Gannibal designed for himself. The answer he recorded in his 2005 book, Gannibal - The Moor of Petersburg, was that the inscription FVMMO meant "homeland." 

Russian medal adorned with Avraham Hannibal's coat of arms
18th Century
(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Barnes, said Somers-Cocks, was 'just as eager as Gnammankou to make Hannibal a scion of 'real', Black Africa.'

It seems to me that Barnes succumbed to over-enthusiasm for Logone-Birni's claim, and has been less than rigorous in his use of evidence.

But Barnes was at least careful enough to note that Gnammankou's case for Cameroon was both 'imaginative' and 'far from conclusive.'

When Somers-Cocks visited the same sultan in 2004, about a year after Barnes, the sultan denied Barnes' version of events and said the translation was "let's fight." Somers-Cocks states that the French scholar Henry Tourneux, who is 'the world's leading authority on Kotoko linguistics,' agreed in his analysis.

The Journal of Cameroon re-published that announcement from French paper Le Monde as follows:

The discovery of the Beninese researcher sparked a storm among supporters of Ethiopian origin, often animated by a certain racism. For Abyssinia might be in Africa, it was an empire, Orthodox Christian like Russia, and it had never been colonized. But the Cameroonian track is reinforced by the French linguist Henry Tourneux, emeritus research director at the CNRS, specialist in the region. Long skeptical, he is now convinced: “The inscription in Roman characters, FVMMO, which we find on the coat of arms of the Hanibals of Russia, means“ Let's fight! ” in the Kotoko language."

Sultan Mahamat Bahar Marouf of Logone-Birni
(Source: Actu Cameroun)

Regardless of the actual translation, it seems that the Kotoko language, which is not spoken in Ethiopia or Eritrea, is by far the one most identified with that inscription. According to the Encyclopedia of the Third World, published in 1992, the Kotoko ethnic group lives primarily in northern Cameroon. They can also be found in Chad and Nigeria. If we can find another language from the horn of Africa to match Gannibal's inscription, then we may have another angle from which to identify Gannibal's place of birth outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

Somers-Cocks suggests that the inscription may be a Latin acronym for the phrase Fortuna Vitam Meam Mutavit Oppido, meaning "fortune has changed my life in the city."

Perhaps no other city established Gannibal on the path to a successful military career than Paris.

Sultan Mahamat and Gnammankou were both present for a ceremony at Gannibal's alma mater La Fère (the former French artillery academy) in 2010 when a memorial plaque was unveiled, identifying Logone-Birni, Cameroon as Gannibal's birthplace. Also present were a number of dignitaries from France, Russia, Estonia, and Cameroon. With the blessing of each respective nation, the truth was set in stone.

Ultimately, the most important perspective in all of this is that of Gannibal's own family.

From family legends, Pushkin wrote of his mother:

Her grandfather was a Black man, the son of a sovereign prince. 

Gannibal's children, he said, were also Black.

His second wife , Christina-Regina von Sheberh, married him when he was Reverend Chief Commandant and gave birth to him many Black children of both sexes.

This icon of Russia speaks for himself.

What more proof do we need?

Some might ask another question: why does any of this matter anyways?

Assuming that Gannibal was indeed trafficked to Turkey through the Arab Slave Trade in sub-Saharan Africa, he came quite a far way, literally and figuratively speaking. As we read his story, it behooves us as African people to recognize that we, too, have a far way to go.

Gannibal's story is an inspiration for us today. Stories of African successes like that of Gannibal demonstrate that we have always had the potential to do great things. No matter where we go, we are capable of making a difference in our society. They also prove to the world that Africa is a place of substance, progress, and innovation. Who wouldn't want to see the birthplace of Abraham Gannibal?

Sultan Mahamat identifies with both Gannibal and Pushkin, understanding the significance of studying the past for the improvement of Africa's future. Once, there stood a small museum dedicated to Hannibal in the center of his village. But years of neglect caused it to collapse.

When he was questioned about it, the sultan told Le Monde journalists Serge Michel and Joan Tilouine: 

Young people don't give a damn about history.

As Michel and Tilouine looked upon the Black youth of Logone-Birni in the present, they could only report the absolute worst outlook from a people who lost sight of who they are.

'No job, no electricity, no doctor, no money, no future.'

- Omri C.