Sevasti Qiriazi and the girls’ school in Korçë (1891–1914)

Sevasti Qiriazi was born in Tërnovë, near Manastir, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Her year of birth is not known for certain: it is usually given as between 1870 and 1872. Her grave records 1870, a 1904 American immigration document implies 1872, while some later documents give 1876, which is considered an error.

Education

With the help of her brother Gjerasim, Sevasti attended the American College for Girls in Istanbul from 1888 to 1891, where she received her degree. She is regarded as the first Albanian woman to complete a university education. It is often wrongly said that she studied at Robert College, a sister institution of this college.

The Korçë school

In 1891 Sevasti and Gjerasim opened in Korçë a school for girls in the Albanian language, and Sevasti became its director. At that time most girls did not go to school at all, and the few schools that existed for them used mainly other languages. The school had Protestant founders and backers, but admitted pupils of all faiths. From 1891 to 1913 it had on average about 47 pupils a year.

After Gjerasim's death in 1894, Sevasti took on full responsibility for the school. She ran it through difficult years, under pressure from the authorities and from those who did not want Albanian education. The school closed in 1914, during the war and the unrest in the region.

At a time when many girls could not write their own name, the Korçë school taught them to write in their own language.

America and the return

In 1910 she married Kristo Dako, and they had two sons, Aleksandër and Gjergj. After leaving Albania in 1914, the family emigrated in 1915 to the United States and settled in Massachusetts. There Sevasti helped open an Albanian school and, with her sister Parashqevi, published the magazine Ylli i Mëngjesit ("The Morning Star") in Boston.

At the end of 1921 she returned to Albania. With Kristo and Parashqevi she founded an institute for girls in Tirana, which later moved to a new campus in Kamëz. In 1933, when private education was nationalised, the institute was closed.

The last years

In 1943 the family was imprisoned and interned in the Banjica camp near Belgrade, and released at the end of 1944. After the war the communist regime persecuted them: in 1946 they were evicted from their home and both sons were arrested. Gjergj died in prison in February 1949. Sevasti died in poverty in Tirana on 30 August 1949, while her other son was still in prison.

What the sources say, and what they do not

Some claims about her are not supported by documents. For example, her participation in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, recorded on her grave monument, has no evidence. Nor did she attend the Congress of Manastir; her sister Parashqevi was there. These corrections do not diminish her work. On the contrary, they show it at its true scale: a whole life devoted to the education of Albanian girls.