| ScheherazadeArabic: شهرزاد | |
| Series: | One Thousand and One Nights |
| Portrayer: | Mili Avital, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Claude Jade, Anna Karina, María Montez, Cyrine Abdelnour, Sulaf Fawakherji, Annette Haven, Meredith Stepien, Damini Kanwal Shetty |
| Occupation: | Queen consort |
| Spouse: | Shahryar |
| Gender: | Female |
| Children: | 3 sons and possibly 1 daughter |
| Lbl21: | Other names |
| Data21: | Shahrazad, Shahrzad |
Scheherazade is a major character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights.
According to modern scholarship, the name Scheherazade derives from the Middle Persian name, which is composed of the words and .[1] [2] [3] The earliest forms of Scheherazade's name in Arabic sources include (ar|شيرازاد|Šīrāzād) in al-Masudi, and in Ibn al-Nadim.[4] [5]
The name appears as in the Encyclopaedia of Islam[3] and as in the Encyclopædia Iranica.[2] Among standard 19th-century printed editions, the name appears as ar|شهرزاد|Šahrazād|label=none in Macnaghten's Calcutta edition (1839–1842)[6] and in the 1862 Bulaq edition,[7] and as ar|شاهرزاد|Šāhrazād|label=none in the Breslau edition (1825–1843).[8] Muhsin Mahdi's critical edition has ar|شهرازاد|Šahrāzād|label=none.[9]
The spelling Scheherazade first appeared in English-language texts in 1801, borrowed from German usage.[10]
The oldest known text of the tale of Scheherazade is a ninth century (CE) Arabic manuscript from Cairo.[11] By the twelfth century the 1001 Nights was established, with the story of Scheherazade being its frame.[11]
The story goes that the monarch Shahryar, on discovering that his first wife was unfaithful to him, resolved to marry a new virgin every day and to have her beheaded the next morning before she could dishonor him. Eventually, the vizier could find no more virgins of noble blood and, against her father's wishes, Scheherazade volunteered to marry the king.
Sir Richard Burton's translation of The Nights describes Scheherazade in this way:
Once in the king's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved younger 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 as Scheherazade told her first story. The night passed by, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle. The king asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was no time, as dawn was breaking. So the king spared her life for one day so she could finish the story the next night. The following night Scheherazade finished the story and then began a second, more exciting tale, which she again stopped halfway through at dawn. Again, the king spared her life for one more day so that she could finish the second story.
Thus the king kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the conclusion of each previous night's story. At the end of 1,001 nights, and 1,000 stories, Scheherazade finally told the king that she had no more tales to tell him. She summoned her three sons that she had bore him during the 1000 nights to come in before the king (one was a nursling, one was crawling, and one could walk) and she placed them in front of the king. Then she kissed the ground again and said: "King of the age, these are your children and my wish is that as an act of generosity towards them to free me from sentence of death, for if you kill me, these babies will have no mother and you will find no other woman to bring them up so well." The king granted her a pardon as he could see that she was a "chaste and pure woman, freeborn and God-fearing." He then presented a splendid and magnificent robe to Scheherazade's father, the vizier, and she was celebrated throughout his kingdom for 30 days.