Scheherazade

Scheherazade شهرزاد
One Thousand and One Nights character
Scheherazade, painted in the 19th century by Sophie Anderson
Portrayed by	Mili Avital, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Claude Jade, Anna Karina, María Montez, Cyrine Abdelnour, Sulaf Fawakherji, Meredith Stepien
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Queen consort
Family	The chief vizier (father) Dunyazad (sister)
Spouse(s)	Shahryar
Children	3 sons
Other names	Shahrazad, Shahrzad

Scheherazade /ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːdᵊ/, or Shahrazad (Persian: شهرازاد‎‎ Šahrāzād), is a character and the storyteller in One Thousand and One Nights. This book includes the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba and many more.

The story goes that Shahryar (شهریار Šahryār, "server of the realm", i.e., the king) found out one day that his first wife was unfaithful to him. Therefore, he resolved to marry a new virgin each day as well as behead the previous day's wife, so that she would have no chance to be unfaithful to him. He had killed 1,000 such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

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

Against her father's wishes, 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, Dunyazade (دنیازاد Donyāzād), 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 of the story. 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 to finish the story the next night. The next night, Scheherazade finished the story and then began a second, even more exciting tale, which she again stopped halfway through at dawn. Again, the king spared her life for one more day so she could finish the second story.