Topic: Scheherazade

[Nichi]

Scheherazade

Scheherazade is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

Legend tells us that each day, Shahryār, the king, would marry would take a new wife, and send the previous day's wife to be beheaded. His first wife had been unfaithful to him, and so he took out his anger on each successive wife. He had killed 1,000 such women by the time he met his Vizier's daughter, Scheherazade.

Sir Richard Burton's translation of The Nights describes Scheherazade as follows:

"[Scheherazade] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of bygone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."

Against her father's wishes, Scheherazade volunteered to spend a single night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked to bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade. Secretly, Dinazade had been instructed to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night.

Shahryār lay awake and listened in wonderment as Scheherazade told her first story. The night passed, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, as dawn was breaking.

The King spared her life for that one day so that she might finish the story the next night. The next night, Scheherazade finished the story, and then started a second, even more exciting tale. Again, she stopped halfway through, at dawn. Shahryār again spared her life to finish the second story.

And so, Scheherazade remained alive day by day, as the king eagerly anticipated the ending to the previous night's story. At the end of 1,001 nights, and 1,000 stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him.

During these 1,001 nights, however, Shahryār had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen.


Notes:
(1) Scheherazade is pronounced: /ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːd(ə)/
(2) Shahryār also is seen as: Shahriār or Shahriyār or Schahryār or Sheharyar or Shaheryar or Shahrayar or Shaharyar. He is the fictional Persian Sassanid King of kings.

http://www.thesmartwitch.com/

[Image: Scheherazade by Sophie Anderson (1850-1900). Oil on Canvass. Found at the New Art Gallery Walsail. This reproduction is in the public domain in the United States.]