Shahriyar
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"And so King Shahryar 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." --Sholem Stein |
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Shahryār or Shahriār or Shahriyār or Schahryār or Sheharyar or Shahrayar or Shaharyar , meaning The Great King is the fictional Persian Sassanid King of kings in One Thousand and One Nights, who is told stories by his future wife, Shahrazad.
Shahryār ruled over a Persian Empire extended to India, over all the adjacent islands and a great way beyond the Ganges as far as China, while Shahryār’s younger brother, Shāhzamān (شاهزمان) ruled over Samarkand. There is an anomaly in the story, for the King Shahryār is a Sassanid, and thus a Zoroastrian and not a Muslim as most of the stories' characters are.
In the frame-story, Shahryār is betrayed by his wife, which makes him go mad and believe that all women will, in the end, betray him. So every night for three years, the mad king takes a wife and has her executed the next morning, until he marries Scheherazade, his vizier’s beautiful and clever daughter. For 1001 nights in a row, Scheherazade tells Shahryār a story, each time stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, thus forcing him to keep her alive for another day so that she can complete the tale the next night.
