Shahryār

This is a list of characters within the medieval collection of Middle Eastern folk tales One Thousand and One Nights.

Scheherazade (Persian: شهرزاد‎‎ Šahrzād also called Shahrazad) is the legendary Persian queen and the storyteller and narrator of The Nights. She is the daughter of the kingdom's vizier and sister of Dunyazad (Persian: دنیازاد‎‎).

She marries King Shahryar, who has vowed that he will execute a new bride every day. For 1001 nights, Scheherazade tells her husband a story every night, stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day.

Dunyazad, Dunyazade, (also called Dunyazatde, Dinazade, or Dinarzad) (Persian: دنیازاد‎‎) is the younger sister of Queen Scheherazade. In the story cycle, it is she who (at Scheherazade's instruction) initiates the tactic of cliffhanger storytelling to prevent her sister's execution by Shahryar. Dunyazad, brought to her sister's bedchamber so that she could say farewell before Scheherazade's execution the next morning, asks her sister to tell one last story. At the successful conclusion of the tales, Dunyazad marries Shah Zaman, Shahryar's younger brother.

She is recast as a major character as the narrator of the Dunyazadiad segment of John Barth's novel Chimera.

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