Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

II. Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia / Ближний Восток, Кавказ и Центральная Азия 300 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 day, 6 October, StepanApraksin, who accompanied the embassy, was asked to prepare elephants’ provision lists and information on elephant keepers’ food provisioning and salaries. 1 On 26 November 1741 the female elephant presented to Elizabeth Petrovna and until then provisioned by its owner was assigned to the same department. At that period the animals were provisioned with eighteen pud s and eight pounds of wheat flour, one pud and sixteen pounds of sugar, thirty pounds of butter, thirty-six pounds of rice, four buckets of simple wine, ninety-eight pud s of hay 2 , sixty candles, sixteen pounds of salt and eight pounds of garlic per day. 3 On 9 October the elephants were placed in the newly built and renovated barns. 4 A short time after their arrival and settling on the new place the animals caused a great stir. In the morning of 16 October three of them broke free from their enclosure and ran away, ‘having become angry between themselves because of females’. Two escapees were soon detected and seized, and the last one ‘went through the garden and broke the wooden hedge, and got to the Vasilyevsky island, and there broke the Senate and the Finnish village’, where it was finally captured. 5 Elephant keeper Āghā Ṣadīq 6 , who reported this accident to the authorities, urged to supply him with thick iron chains and rings (shackles) with hasps, worrying that otherwise the elephants would ‘do much trouble at night’. It seems that his request was not granted, as early in the morning of the next day four restless residents of the Elephant Yard broke the gates and escaped from their barns once again. In a couple of months the animals received another chance to demonstrate their fiery temper. ‘Sankt Peterburgskie vedomosti’ mentioned the elephant battle staged 1 Сенатский архив. СПб.: Типография Правительствующего Сената, 1892. Т. V: 1. Журналы и определения Правительствующего Сената со 2 октября по 23 ноября 1741 г.; 2. Журнал и протокольная записка собрания министров и генералитета с 25 ноября по 12 декабря 1741 г.; 3. Журналы и определения Правительствующего сената с 16 декабря 1741 г. по 15 декабря 1743 г. / Senatskiy arkhiv [The Senate archive]. St Petersburg: Tipografiya Pravitel’stvuyushchego Senata, 1892. Vol. V: 1. Zhurnaly i opre- deleniya Pravitel’stvuyushchego Senata so 2 oktyabrya po 23 noyabrya 1741 g.; 2. Zhurnal i protokol’naya zapiska sobraniya ministrov i generaliteta s 25 noyabrya po 12 dekabrya 1741 g.; 3. Zhurnaly i opredeleniya Pravitel’stvuyushchego senata s 16 dekabrya 1741 g. po 15 dekabrya 1743 g. (In Russian). Р. 10. 2 Later, provisioning elephants with hay was reduced to fifty pud s per day. 3 Vnutrenniy byt russkogo gosudarstva. Book 1. Р. 336. Extra expenses on medicine and other supplies provided for the elephants were to be covered upon requests of the Jägermeister (Ober-Jägermeister) Chancellery. Rossiyskiy gosudarstvenniy arkhiv drevnikh aktov (Rus- sian State Archives of Ancient Acts, hereafter RGADA). Fond 1239. Opis’ 3. Delo 32414; Vnutrenniy byt russkogo gosudarstva. Book 1. Р. 337. 4 Ibid. Р. 330; Pylyaev. Stariy Peterburg. Р. 62. 5 Vnutrenniy byt russkogo gosudarstva. Book 1. Р. 339. See also Pylyaev. Stariy Peter- burg. Р. 63. 6 Āghā Ṣadīq, the Persian elephant keeper, arrived in St Petersburg in 1737.