Gannibal

the long version

In the spring of 1703 a young African boy stepped off a slave ship in Constantinople, the gateway between East and West. Huddling in chains, with other frightened captives, the seven year old claimed to be a prince of Abyssinia, a 'noble Moor' kidnapped and stolen out of Africa. His tragedy was shared by millions of black people caught up in the Islamic slave trade, but his destiny was unique, since Abram Petrovich Gannibal, as he became, was rescued by Peter the Great. In a hybrid of travelogue and detective story, Hugh Barnes combines historical scholarship with a literary imagination to investigate Gannibal's half forgotten African background, perhaps in Ethiopia, perhaps in Chad, before unearthing lost documents and new clues that help to reconstruct the extraordinary life of the first black intellectual in Europe.