Editing Alexander Pushkin (section)

==Ancestry==
[[File:Pushkin_Coat_of_arms.jpg|thumb|left|180px|Coat of arms of the Pushkin family]]
[[File:PuschkinSL.JPG|thumb|180px|Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin]]
Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1767–1848), was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century.<ref name="Saint Petersburg 2007">Н.К. Телетова [N.K. Teletova] (2007).</ref> Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda (Nadya) Ossipovna Gannibal (1775–1836), was descended through her paternal grandmother from [[German nobility|German]] and [[List of nobles and magnates within Scandinavia in the 13th century|Scandinavian nobility]].<ref name="Лихауг Lihaug 2006 31–38">{{Cite journal | last = Лихауг [Lihaug]| first = Э.Г. [E.G.]| title = Предки А.С. Пушкина в Германии и Скандинавии(предположительно): происхождение Христины Регины Шёберг (Ганнибал) от Клауса фон Грабо из Грабо [Ancestors of A.S. Pushkin in Germany and Scandinavia: Descent of Christina Regina Siöberg (Hannibal) from Claus von Grabow zu Grabow]| journal=Генеалогический вестник [Genealogical Herald].–Санкт-Петербург [Saint Petersburg]| volume = 27| pages = 31–38|date=November 2006}}</ref><ref name="Lihaug 2007 32–46">{{Cite journal | last = Lihaug| first = Elin Galtung| title = Aus Brandenburg nach Skandinavien, dem Baltikum und Rußland. Eine Abstammungslinie von Claus von Grabow bis Alexander Sergejewitsch Puschkin 1581–1837| journal=Archiv für Familiengeschichtsforschung| volume = 11| pages = 32–46|year=2007}}</ref> She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal (1744–1807) and his wife, Maria Alekseyevna Pushkina (1745–1818).

Ossip Abramovich Gannibal's father, Pushkin's great-grandfather, was [[Abram Petrovich Gannibal]] (1696–1781), an African [[Page (occupation)|page]] kidnapped and taken to [[Constantinople]] as a gift for the [[Ottoman Sultan]] and later transferred to Russia as a gift for [[Peter the Great]]. Abram wrote in a letter to Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, that Gannibal was from the town of "Lagon", largely on the basis of a mythical biography by Gannibal's son-in-law Rotkirch.

[[Vladimir Nabokov]], when researching ''[[Eugene Onegin]]'', cast serious doubt on this origin theory. Later research by the scholars [[Dieudonné Gnammankou]] and [[Hugh Barnes]] eventually conclusively established that Gannibal was instead born in Central Africa, in an area bordering [[Lake Chad]] in modern-day [[Cameroon]].<ref name="Nsl">{{cite book|title=New Statesman|date=2005|publisher=New Statesman Limited|page=36|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aowxAQAAIAAJ|access-date=7 January 2015}}</ref><ref name="Nepomnyashchy">{{cite book |editor=Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy |editor2= Nicole Svobodny |editor3=Ludmilla A. Trigos |title=Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness|date=2006|publisher=Northwestern University Press|isbn=0810119714|page=31|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=shNNrZJEEUEC|access-date=7 January 2015}}</ref> After education in France as a [[military engineer]], Gannibal became governor of [[Tallinn|Reval]] and eventually [[History of Russian military ranks|Général en Chief]] (the third most senior army rank) in charge of the building of sea forts and canals in Russia.
[[File:N.O.Puskina.jpg|thumb|180px|Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda Gannibal]]