Scheherazade

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For other uses, see Scheherazade (disambiguation).

Scheherazade شهرزاد
One Thousand and One Nights character
Queen Scheherazade tells her stories to King Shahryar.
Portrayed by	Mili Avital, Catherine Zeta-Jones, María Montez
Information
Gender	Female
Specialty	Storytelling
Occupation	Queen consort
Family	Chief Vizier (father) Dunyazad (sister)
Spouse(s)	Shahryar
Children	3 sons
Religion	Muslim
Nationality	Persian
Other names	Shahrazad, Shahrzād, Šahrzād

Scheherazade (IPA: /ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːd, -ˈzɑːdə/), sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād (Persian: شهرزاد Šahrzād), is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

The frame tale goes that every day Shahryar (Persian: شهريار or "king") would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed three thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

In Sir Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights, Shahrazad was described in this way:

"[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone 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 protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dunyazad, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe to Scheherazade's first story and asked for another, but Scheherazade said there was not time as dawn was breaking, and regretfully so, as the next story was even more exciting.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive as he eagerly anticipated each new story, until, one thousand and one adventurous nights, and three sons later, the King had not only been entertained but wisely educated in morality and kindness by Scheherazade who became his Queen.

The nucleus of these stories is formed by an old Persian book called Hezar-afsana or the "Thousand Myths" (Persian: هزارافسانه).

The earliest forms of Scheherazade's name include Šīrāzād (شیرازد) in Masudi and Šahrāzād (شهرازاد) in Ibn al-Nadim, the latter meaning "she whose realm or dominion (شهر šahr) is noble (ازاد āzād)". In explaining his spelling choice for the name Burton says, "Shahrázád (Persian) = City-freer; in the older version Scheherazade (probably both from Shirzád = lion-born). 'Dunyázá' = world-freer. The Bres[lau] Edit[ion] corrupts the former to Shárzád or Sháhrazád; and the Mac[naghten] and Calc[utta] to Shahrzád or Shehrzád. I have ventured to restore the name as it should be." ^[1]. Having introduced the name Burton does not continue to use the diacritics on the name.

Scheherazade was identified, confused with, or partly derived from the legendary queen Homāy, daughter of Bahman, who has the epithet Čehrzād or Čehrāzād (چهرازاد) "she whose appearance is noble". Harun al-Rashid's mother, Al-Khayzuran, is also said to have influenced the character of Scheherazade.

[edit] In popular culture

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Scheherazade, Op. 35, is a symphonic suite composed by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888, and is based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
Peter Cetera's 3rd solo album One More Story (1988) contains a song named Scheherazade. In the song, Cetera tells the story of an unhappy Arabian King who is bored with all his riches and harem of dancing girls but once he lays his eyes on Scheherazade, he suddenly becomes entranced by her and makes her his queen. Background vocals were performed by Madonna.
"The Magic of Scheherazade" is a 1989 video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by Culture Brain, Inc.
Scheherazade and Other Stories is a 1975 album by the rock/folk group Renaissance
The Riddles of Scheherazade is a book of logic puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan.
The Magic: The Gathering card game features a card called Shahrazad, the art of which depicts the queen.
In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the narrator repeatedly compares his own tales of his life to Scheherazade's, and mentions that he can't "count on having even a thousand nights and a night" (page 4) in which to tell them.
In the Vertigo graphic novel Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Snow White takes the role of Scheherazade and tells background stories about the inhabitants of Fabletown in order to prevent her beheading at the hands of the Sultan. At the end of the book, Scheherazade makes an appearance, and Snow White tells her the secret to make sure the sultan doesn't have her executed. "He likes stories."
The protagonist of Stephen King's novel Misery, Paul Sheldon, frequently compares himself to Scheherazade as he writes a novel both for himself and to keep his captor from killing him.
Kamelot's song 'Nights of Arabia' from the album The Fourth Legacy describes the story of Scheherazade.
"Scheherazade" is the title of a poem in John Ashbery's book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
Scheherazade and a Thousand Tales is part of the lyrics of the song "Friend Like Me" in Disney's Aladdin.
"Scheherazade Sits" is the title of a song by filk artist Terence Chua.
Shadow Spinner is a book written by Susan Fletcher about Shahrazad's tale through the eyes of a harem girl named Marjan.
In the novel New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, the narrator, Bella, avoids asking Edward any questions on the flight so she may have some time with him after the flight landed saying "I hoped that by postponing the discussion, I could buy a few more hours with him at some later time—spin this out for another night, Scheherazade-style."
The Storyteller's Daughter is a novel that focuses specifically on the life of Scheherazade before and during her marriage to Shahryar