THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE IN RUSSIA
By Dieudonne Gnammankou in La Channe et le lien, Doudou Diene, (id.)
Paris, Editions UNESCO, 1988Translated from the French and forwarded to the Global African Presence by Sister Zawadi Sagna
Edited by Runoko RashidiPosted by RUNOKO RASHIDI
EDITORS'S PREFACE
The following is the English translation of Dieudonne Gnammankou's Foreword to his brilliant work on the African slave trade to early Russia. It is a remarkable document in that it sheds light on an extremely important but little known subject matter and provides precious data on Abraham Hannibal--the maternal great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, long considered the greatest writer in Russian history.
We thank Sister Zawadi Sagna for all of her hard work and the many hours spent in the document's preparation. If there are any errors to be found here or any lack of clarity in the text, such as the numbers and origins of Africans in the Ottoman armies, it is solely due to the editing of Runoko Rashidi. All of the references are included in the original document.
Sister Zawadi we salute you for your efforts.
Runoko Rashidi, editor.
===================================================
FOREWORD
Until today there are few people who have studied this topic. In the fifth volume of the "General History of Africa" published by UNESCO, Pr. Joseph Harris raises the question in the chapter devoted to the African diaspora in the new and ancient worlds. He specifies that "In Turkey and surrounding areas serious researches about major slave warehouses from Tripoli and Benghazi are particularly essential". Then, he gives as an example the African children's traffic from Turkey to Russia at the end of the 17th century. He also quoted the most famous case of this traffic: one of the African child victims of this slave trade (Ibrahim or Abraham Hannibal) who became the great grandfather of Alexander Pushkin--the greatest Russian writer. The question asked concerns the range, reasons and impact of this traffic, likewise the road taken by the slave buyers from Constantinople to Moscow.
Intrigued by Abraham Hannibal's destiny (who is the most famous character known in the Russian military story and who's also the most famous African of Russia) we did some researches about the African presence in Russia at the beginning of the 18th century and into the 19th.
From the 18th to the 20th century, A. Hannibal is initially the center of popular interest of Russians concerning Africa. Of course, Pushkin did a lot in the popularity of the one Russians still call today "Peter the Great's Negro", an expression used by the great Russian writer to refer to his African ancestor in an unfinished volume written in 1827. Some elements on the circumstances of the Black children's forced exile from Turkey to Russia should allow us to clarify under a new day the question of the African children's trade between those two countries. It exists in some archival documents on this topic.
The Ottoman customs officials took a census of the slaves who got in the Empire on registers. These documents, which still exist, are in the Istanbul Ottoman archives. Most of them are still relatively unexplored because very rarely are there specialists, even in Turkey, who read the ancient Ottoman language. Their study should permit us to have an exact idea of the number of African victims of this traffic.
The African slaves who were brought into the Ottoman Empire suffered the same lot as the European slaves coming from the European territories (Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Greece) under Ottoman domination. For the most part the traffic concerned young boys and girls from eight to fifteen years. The lot reserved for the young girls was generally the same as the Arabian countries. The most beautiful became cohabitants in the sultan's harems and the powerful of the Court, or for others, servants in the rich families of the empire. As for the boys, they became pages, soldiers, eunuchs, ordinary servants, or slave labor employed in different Ottoman provinces.
The Ottoman army counted thousands of African soldiers in its ranks. An interesting document, published in 1717 in France, states this African presence in the Ottoman troops raised the same year to "serve against H.I.M. in Hungary and against the Venetians firm in cavalry and infantry, as much as Orient, as West, as midi than Septentrion". The Ottoman army's pluriethnic component is very eloquent. We can find at the Armenian's side, Valaches, Persians, Assyrians, Macedonians and also Brazilians, Africans (Egyptians, Ethiopians, and other nationalities).
1) In the first army, the one sent to Hungary in 1717, we count: a) in the cavalry, in all 105,000 men - 10,000 Affricans (the document quoted put on a side the Affricans*, Etyopians*, and the Egyptians, <*orthographe of the origine>) - 4,000 Etyiopians - 10,000 Egyptians - 4,000 Brazilians that is to say 24,000 men coming from the African continent (the national origin of the Brazilians being not given, they are not included in this total). b) in the infantry, a total of 251,000 men, -including 20,000 Affricans - 16,000 Etyopians - 4,000 Egyptians - 15,000 Brazilians, that is to say 40,000 sons of Africa.
2) In the second Ottoman army, displayed the same year against the Venetians, there were: a) in the infantry, on a total of 62,000, - 6,000 Affricans - 5,000 Etyopians - 7,000 Egyptians - 6,000 Brazilians that is to say 21,000 Africans.
Moreover, numerous evidences exist about a Negro-African presence in different structures of the Ottoman state, particularly between the 16th and the 18th centuries. The Ottoman sultans made eunuchs and children come from Africa, especially from Ethiopia and the Lake Chad area, destined to be employed on different levels of the Ottoman administration.
It's established that the first Black eunuchs employed in the Ottoman sultan's palace goes back to the 15th century, since 1485. In 1587, one of them was in the limelight and became the great eunuch, that is to say, the chief of the Black and White eunuchs. His authority was high. The Kizlar Aghasi, or Chief of the Eunuchs, had the rank of pasha and was the commandant of the hallbarders (baltadji). He was immediately above the rank of numerous Ottoman high functionaries including the Treasury's steward. He was also the Empire's high religious authority, steward of the imperial mosques and devout foundations of Mecca and Medina. Only he could talk to the sultan at any time of the day and the night. When he retired, the eunuch lived a golden existence in Egypt.
From what we know, no study has been made about the impact exercised by Africans so influential in the Ottoman administration. It would be also interesting to study the mark left by those great African eunuchs who exercised high functions during several centuries. Kizlar Aghasi, for example, was "the most feared man in all of the Ottoman Empire".
Moreover, the affective link between those "exiled" and their motherland, Africa, has never been broken. You just have to visit in Istanbul, for example, in the Ottoman sultan's palaces, the Black eunuch's ancient apartments (the building sheltered six hundred of them), to discover that the walls of certain bedrooms were covered by African landscapes. So Africa was still present in the memory of those "exiled" from quite another kind.
There existed slave markets in several towns of the Ottoman Empire. The slave trade was very prosperous. Hence a slave traffic in Constantinople towards other European countries, Russia for example. African children were bought on the Ottoman markets by Russian traders who brought them back in Russia. The researches that we have done on this topic cover only the period touching the end of the 17th and the first quarter of the 18th centuries, that's to say, Peter the Great Russian emperor's reign.
First, we should emphasize that this traffic's proportions were very small. The major African victims were children. They were destined to be pages to the Russian imperial Court. The Russian authors having written on the question estimate that the czars only imitated the other European courts which made use of the Black page's presence in their palaces a fashion style of the period. According to all probability, the arrival of the first Black children to the Russian Court goes back at the end of the 17th century. From where did these first Blacks come from?
According to two archival documents, one correspondence dated from 1698 between General Lefort employed to the Russian Court and the czar Peter I, then traveling to London (two letters) - the report of admiral Appraise dating from 1699 and mentioning a Black child coming from England, we can say that London was the first place from which the Russian Court's Black children came before 1700.
In the first document, Lefort in bad Russian language written in Latin, wrote: "Poujalest nie zabouvat coupit arabi" which means, "Don't forget to buy the Negroes". In a second letter written one month later, he reminded his first request to the czar in the following terms: "Scholo biou, milos twoia, schto ti iswolis arapof dosetats", which can be translated this way: "I submit this request readily, be so kind as to buy the Negroes". Lefort sent those two letters to Peter I during his stay to London. Concerning this same czar's travel to the west of Europe, we can read in Grundwald's book, "Peter the Great's Russia", that the czar bought "two little Negroes".
The second document of the year following 1699 certifies "the sending from the land of England, of a Black child named Kaptiner". Three other Africans, adults, hadn't been bought but recruited from Amsterdam by the same Lefort during his travel. They were named Ian Touchekourin, Thomas Izes, and Petro Seichi. The first one was a painter in the Navy. He painted the ships under construction. The second one was a vessel builder. He participated towards the construction of the boats "Star" and "Loukas" in the years 1703-1705. As for the third one, he was employed a few years with the fleet, then engaged with the Navy office.
Openly, we can say concerning those documents that a few Africans had been taken away not only from England but also from Holland in the last years of the 17th century in Russia. The Russian archives mention also the presence of a Black man in the care of the boyard Matviev. At the end of the 17th century, in Russia, there were it's true, Africans in very small numbers at Moscow's Court but also in some of the noble families.
From 18th till the end of the first part of the 19th century the number of Blacks in Russia is more important. Therefore it's impossible to give numbers. No detailed researches have ever been made on this topic. But we can follow the trace during all 18th and 19th century the African presence in Russia. The study of the Russian Imperial Court narratives show that sometimes the Russian emperors had ten to twenty-five Black pages in their suite. The Russian iconography of this time bring also a lot of testimonies. When they arrived in Russia, they taught them the Russian language in the monasteries. As some of those pages became adults they became soldiers, notably regimental drummers.
Concerning the first quarter of the 18th century, numerous archives document a new origin for the Africans of the Russian court--the Ottoman Empire. The series of documents best studied by the Russian authors are the ones relative to the arrival of three African children to Moscow in November 1704. These letters and official reports permit us to clarify the African children's trade in Constantinople and to draw up the slave route to Russia. At this time, the safest itinerary was the following: Ottoman Empire--Valachia--Moldavia--Little Russia--Moscow. In the case mentioned above, the children were bought to Constantinople in a clandestine manner. Apparently, it was very dangerous to get slaves at this time (in 1704 Ahmed III took the power after political troubles) and the traders hid the children during the journey on the territories under Ottoman domination. The route to Constantinople between Valachia and Moldavia was full of dangers for the Black children's traffickers.
The slaves were convoyed for safety's sake from Valachia, whose lord was an ally of the Russian czar. The traders possessed some safe conducts, delivered by the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, which made the route easier. One of the three children, described in the letter of the trader Savva Ragouzinski as "very black and beautiful", had been baptized, during the journey, under the name Abraham. Evidence indicates that this was the child who became a few decades later the famous Black general of the Russian army, Abraham Hannibal, the great grandfather of one of the greatest writers in the world of literature--Alexander Pushkin.
In early times the Russian word to refer to Black people was "Ethiopian", a Greek borrowing. But at the 17th-18th century, it's the word "arap", a Turkish term which is used. It is the equivalent to "maure", "mohr", words which at this time were used in French and German to refer to Black people or Africans. It's important not to confuse the word "arap" with "arabe". It's important to emphasize that the translators of Russian into French, for example, had already committed such errors which distort the original document and attribute to Negro-Africans characteristics other than origins. The Russian word "arap" can be considered as the equivalent of "habesh", employed in Asia to name Africans.
There were already, at the end of the 17th century, Black people amongst the dwarfs of the Russian Court. One of them was employed by the czar Peter I to translate Greek and Latin texts in Russian. During this same period, the Russian royal archives reveal the existence of African children in Moscow. They are the pages of the Court. So, under the reign of Peter I there were two categories of Black children in Russia--child pages, victims of the trade towards the Ottoman Empire and bought back by Russian traders, on one hand those coming from other European countries, on the other hand, African soldiers and seamen residing in other European countries and engaged under contract in the Russian army or fleet.
One of the Africans already mentioned, Petro Seichi, had been registered under the Russified name Piter Elaoev, which didn't make his identification easy. Europeanization of African names covers numerous search tracks; but we must recognize that Africans were not the only ones to adopt this practice. Many are the cases of Europeans (Swedish or Greek for example), having Russified their names for a better integration in the Russian society. In the Elaoev case, the study of Russian navy's archives of the beginning of the 18th century didn't reveal the Black presence. It's in the reading of the imperial cases that the researcher N. Teletova has discovered fortuitously the mention "arapy" or "Negroes" before the names of Elaoev, Touchekourin and Izes. P. Seichi or Elaoev, had been galley's chief and had commanded in 1712 a fleet of twenty-six ships supplying Vyborg. On October 11, 1715, when his contract expired, Petro Seichi left Russia.
We find in the Russian archives of the era a great deal of information about the Africans of the Court. In this way, we learn that such and such Black child in a course of Russian language in the monastery, that ten rubles has been spent to buy a caftan for another Black child or that during a day out for the Empress Catherine, wife of Peter the Great, there were four Black pages dressed as Indians. At this time, there was a young African known by everybody of the Court under the name Abraham Petrov. Peter I had adopted him as a son and looked personally after his education. It's this young arap (Black) who's going leave a mark all by himself in the African presence numerically small in Russia, but that all the world is obliged to notice because the link he created between Africa and Russia has been so powerful that today he still remains the most popular Black man of Russia. He has been one of a few Africans to whom had been given the opportunity to blossom freely in the Europe of the 18th century as a man fully-fledged. And he proved that genius didn't know the artificial barriers created by men, becoming one of the most highly educated personalities of this age. And to prove to humanity that genius cannot be lost, it is one of a great man's descendants who's going to be immortalized at the 19th century, this African presence in Russia that nothing, not even time's wear, could erase. Because Pushkin, the poet "with Black blood in white veins" is immortal.
The role played by the African general of the Russian imperial army, Abraham Hannibal, and his descendants (two of his sons were army's generals and Pushkin's mother, the one called "The beautiful creole" in the St Petersburg's society was his little child) in the military, technical and literary development of a great European nation like Russia is considerable.
Copyright © 1998 Runoko Rashidi. All rights reserved.
Posted/Revised: July 27, 2005
Webpage design: Kenneth Ritchards