Gabriele Dara
Gabriele Dara the Younger, commonly known as Gavril Dara Junior, was an Arbëreshë politician and poet of the 19th century. He is regarded as one of the early writers of the Albanian National Awakening.
Life
Gabriele Dara was born on 8 January 1826 in Palazzo Adriano, a town in Sicily, southern Italy. His family was one of the first to migrate from Albania to Italy after Skanderbeg's death. They migrated from the region of Rrjoll, northern Albania, Malësia. They also migrated to Greece where they named their settlement Dara after their own surname. His grandfather Gabriele Dara the Elder was among the first collectors of Arbëreshë folklore, while his father Ndre or Andrea published a dictionary of folkloric terms.At an early age he learned Latin and Ancient Greek. In Palermo he received a degree in law and practiced in Agrigento. After the unification of Italy he held a variety of offices in Sicily. At first he served as the first councilor of the prefecture of Palermo and from 1867 to 1869 as governor of Trapani, a town in western Sicily. From 1871 to 1874 he was the director of the liberal political magazine The Reform. He died on 15 November 1885 in Agrigento.