Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, (1696 - 14 May 1781) was an African slave who was brought to Russia by Peter the Great and became major-general, military engineer and governor of Reval. He is perhaps best known today as the great-grandfather of Aleksandr Pushkin, who wrote an unfinished novel about him, "The Moor of Peter the Great". Wikipedia
On a recent visit to the New York Public Library I was struck by the non-Slavonic shelfmark of a work on Pushkin. To my query the reference librarian replied, "Honey, that book is in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture because everybody www.powells.com/review/2005_10_02.html
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal
