SCHIRÒ, GIUSEPPE. - Siculo-Albanian writer and poet, born in Piana dei Greci on 10 August 1865 and died in Naples on 17 February 1927. From his earliest childhood he began to write poetry in Albanian, composing the poems *Skanderbeg* and *Kruja* and translating from Greek the odes of Anacreon and other poems by ancient and modern authors.
His passion was the Albanian language. In 1887 he published the *Rapsodie albanesi* and the journal *Arbi i Rii*, gaining an excellent reputation among Italian and foreign Albanologists. To this first phase of his activity, characterized by the exclusive use of the Italo-Albanian dialect, belong the *Archivio*, a collection of folk literature, the idyll *Mili e Haidha*, and *Te Dheu i Huaj* (*In a Foreign Land*), original poems with a folkloric background. He later published some songs collected in Scutari of Albania (1894), *I Canti della battaglia* (1897), and *Canti popolari d'Albania* (1901). In 1900, when the chair of Albanian Language and Literature was established at the Royal Oriental Institute of Naples, he became its professor and later its director until his death. Thus he was able to deepen and expand his knowledge of the Albanian language in all its dialectal varieties in composing his numerous works in prose and verse. In 1904 he published the journal *La bandiera albanese* in Albanian and Italian, and in 1906 the volume *Gli Albanesi e la questione balcanica*, providing rich documentation for the establishment of an Albanian state friendly to Italy. From 1912 to 1914 he was sent by the Italian government on a mission to Albania, and through his extensive knowledge and expertise he helped orient Albanian policy toward Italy.
Among his principal works are *Canti sacri delle colonie albanesi di Sicilia* (Naples, 1907), many of which became popular and were largely his own compositions. He was a frequent contributor to many Italian and Albanian periodicals. Among his other works, the poem *Kthimi* (*The Return*), which completes the cycle of *Te Dheu i Huaj*, remains unpublished (his portrait is reproduced at the cross-reference V. ITALO-ALBANESI).