Negri, Alexander Fedorovich

It came from an ancient Greek family that lived permanently in Constantinople . Starting his service at the court of the Moldavian ruler Konstantin Ipsilanti , he soon reached a certain position and married the eldest daughter of Ipsilanti himself. Major political events that deprived his father-in-law of statehood had a strong influence on the future fate of Negri. In 1806, he, as a person close to Ipsilanti, went with him to Russia, to Kiev , where, at the invitation of Emperor Alexander I, his father-in-law moved.

In 1815, at the request of the same, Ipsilanti was accepted into the Russian service with the rank of current state adviser and after some time was ranked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Thanks to knowledge of Turkish, Persian, Greek and French, he often performed various important tasks. In 1818, as a senior adviser to the embassy, ​​he went to Persia in the retinue of Ambassador Extraordinary Envoy General A.P. Yermolov , who was instructed to obtain permission from the Tehran court to have a permanent Russian charge d'affaires there and, in addition, to get the Persian government to return those captured in various time of Russian captives. Thanks to his knowledge of Persian customs, he earned the favor of the court and received an offer from the Persian government to take the place of a Russian attorney in Tehran himself. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, he was awarded the Order of Vladimir of the 3rd art. , and on the part of the Persian government - with diamond signs of the Persian order of Leo and the Sun. During his stay in Persia, he kept a detailed diary, which he processed on his return from travel.

In 1820, he was instructed to go to Bukhara in order to establish trade relations and achieve the liberation of the Russians, captured by the Khiva, Kyrgyz and Turkmen and sold into captivity in Bukhara. He fulfilled all the instructions entrusted to him quite successfully and submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a detailed journal of negotiations and correspondence that he conducted with the Bukhara government. Many Bukhara prisoners were taken out from there, and the Order of Anna of the 1st degree was awarded as a reward for Negri's labors. Negri's journey through the Bukhara lands had some scientific results, as he brought a lot to the area of ​​geographical knowledge about this country; Colonel Meyendorff , who was part of the embassy, ​​recorded his personal observations, which later came to light under the name “Voyage d'Orenbourg à Vouchara, fait en 1820”. After this trip Negri received a long rest and did not take any part in affairs until 1828.

The war with Turkey that began that year required his participation in ongoing negotiations with the Turkish Pasha. In April 1828, he was appointed to be under the chief commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Greig . He was ordered to negotiate and maintain relations with the Turkish rulers who commanded the fortresses on the Black Sea. During the siege of the fortress of Anapa (May 6 - June 12, 1828) for successfully negotiating the surrender, he received a diamond ring with the monogram of His Majesty and diamond signs of the Order of Anna of the 1st degree. When the Russian troops launched a siege of the fortress of Varna , throughout the siege he was constantly on the ship "Paris" , which housed the main headquarters. With the fall of the fortress in 1829 he was sent to the commander of a detachment of troops on the left bank of the Danube ; he was repeatedly sent with instructions to negotiate with various Turkish rulers in various fortresses, up to the capture of Zhurzhi fortress . As a reward he received the Order of Stanislav of the 1st degree , a silver medal on the St. George ribbon in memory of the Turkish war and, in addition, 5,000 acres of land in the Bessarabian region .

At the conclusion of the peace, he returned to Petersburg, where he used all his free time to improve his knowledge of oriental languages ​​and, in particular, Arabic . Having lost his wife, he decided to leave Petersburg, including because of the poor tolerance of its climate. Got permission to move to Odessa , where he moved in 1837. In Odessa, he soon began to actively participate in the activities of the newly opened Odessa Society of Antiquities , becoming one of its employees and translating new materials into the Russian language from various Oriental languages. On November 15, 1844, he was elected vice president of the Society and remained in that rank until the end of his life.

In recent years, he has almost lost his legs and traveled to Constantinople for treatment. The unexpected attack of the Turks on Odessa on April 10, 1854 at the beginning of the Crimean War , forced him to leave the city and greatly worsened his health.

He died on June 27 ( July 9 ), 1854 and was buried in the Greek Church in Odessa.

He was married to the daughter of Konstantin Ipsilanti , Elena (1788-1837) ^[2] . He was a father to Alexandros Negris , one of the first Greeks in Boston (Massachusetts, USA), who became the first professor of modern Greek at Harvard University ^[3] .

The scientific and literary activity of Negri began even during his stay in Kiev. Back in 1812, he placed an article in defense of the Wallachian rulers in the 5th book of Vestnik Evropy . In addition, in 1815 he published a translation of the work of Corais "On the current enlightenment of Greece" ^[4] . The largest works of Negri were published in "Notes of the Odessa Society of Antiquities", in addition, several translations of the acts translated by him from the Turkish language were stored in the manuscript of the society’s library. In 1845, he translated five chapters of the Koran from Serbian into Russian, and in 1847 he wrote in Greek an arrangement of the work of Sturdza “On the posts of the holy dignity”.

The main works:

• “Extract from the Turkish manuscript containing the“ History of the Crimean Khans ””;
• a description of the Turkish acts stored in the Society and the City Museum of Antiquities;
• translation of Eski - a Crimean Arabic inscription explaining the construction of the first Muslim mosque in Crimea in 1313;
• revision of the translation of 158 Arabic and Turkish inscriptions located in Bakhchisarai ;
• the transfer of the firman given by Turkish sultan Mustafa to Metropolitan Gideon ^[5] to the Crimean diocese in 1757.

• Negri, Alexander Fedorovich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. - M. , 1896-1918.
• Negri, Alexander Fedorovich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.