Scheherazade and the Sultan

Lang’s tale opens by describing a Sassanid king who ruled well from Persia toward the Chinese borderlands. His people loved him; rival princes feared him; and at his death the realm stood stronger than under any earlier ruler.

Two sons survived him and cared for each other deeply. Schahriar, the elder, hated the rule that kept him from sharing power with Schahzeman. After a decade of that unease he carved Great Tartary out of the Persian holdings and set his brother on that throne.

Schahriar himself had a wife he cherished above everything and showered with jewels and fine clothes. Years later he learned she had betrayed him utterly. The tale presents her execution as the law’s demand, and he ordered the grand-vizir to carry it out. Grief twisted his judgment. He decided every woman must be as false as she had been, if one only looked hard enough, and that the world would be safer with fewer of them. From then on he took a new bride each evening and had her killed at dawn, forcing the same vizir to supply the victims. The vizir obeyed because he had no choice; the city woke each morning to another wedding and another funeral.

Fear and mourning filled the streets. Parents hid their daughters when they could. At last the vizir came home so crushed that his eldest girl, Scheherazade, pressed him until he confessed the Sultan’s custom and tonight’s duty.

Scheherazade knew histories, poems, and the ways of people. She told her father to name her as the next bride. He refused in horror—he would rather die himself than deliver her—and warned that if the Sultan commanded him to kill her, a subject could not refuse. She asked him the same request until, worn down, he consented and walked to the palace to announce that tomorrow evening he would bring Scheherazade.

The Sultan stared. “You would give me your own child?” The vizir answered that she had insisted; even the fate waiting for her had not turned her aside. The Sultan made him swear he would perform the execution himself or lose his own head. The vizir, father and servant both, promised. Permission was granted to bring her.

Back home Scheherazade thanked him as if he had given her a gift and tried to comfort his despair. Then she dressed for the wedding and called her younger sister Dinarzade into a private room.

“I need you,” she said. “Father will take me to the palace. When I meet the Sultan I will beg one last kindness: that you may sleep in our chamber so we are not parted on what may be my final night. If he agrees, wake me an hour before sunrise and ask me—out loud—to tell one of my stories while there is still time. I will start telling it. That is how I mean to lift the terror from this city.” Dinarzade promised to do exactly that.

At the appointed hour the vizir left Scheherazade with the Sultan. He had her lift her veil, admired her beauty, and noticed her tears. She explained that her sister loved her dearly and asked leave for Dinarzade to share the room on this last night together. Schahriar allowed it, and Dinarzade was brought in.

Near dawn Dinarzade stirred and spoke the words they had practiced: if her sister was awake, would she please tell a charming story before the sun rose—it might be their last chance to hear one. Scheherazade turned to the Sultan and asked permission. He said yes. And so, with the Sultan listening and the dawn still an hour away, Scheherazade began her first story, hoping that each tale would buy her one more day and, in time, free the city from its fear.

Where this story comes from

The frame tale of Scheherazade is the opening of Andrew Lang’s The Arabian Nights Entertainments (Gutenberg 128)—the clever storyteller who stays death with unfinished tales.

Lang’s book ends the frame here and moves straight into the stories she tells. In the longer tradition of the Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade keeps stopping each tale at its most exciting point, the Sultan keeps sparing her to hear the rest, and after a thousand and one nights he gives up his cruel law.

Read the original: Andrew Lang, The Arabian Nights Entertainments (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for older readers with adult guidance: includes repeated murders of brides, coercive marriage and a father’s threatened execution. It is not a gentle bedtime frame.

The first story needs two storytellers

Scheherazade prepares the tale, but Dinarzade supplies the timed request that lets it begin. Their private rehearsal becomes a public conversation the Sultan chooses to hear. The page ends at that opening, so its tension depends on a plan whose success is still uncertain. Schahriar’s grief explains his reasoning in the narrative without excusing his violence or his judgment of all women.

Map the plan

Identify the request to bring Dinarzade, the waking time and the request for a story. What does each step make possible? Mark what is achieved on this page and what remains only hoped for.

Talk about it

• Why does Schahriar begin marrying a new wife every night?
• What is Scheherazade’s plan with her sister Dinarzade?
• Why does leaving a story unfinished save her life?

Related stories

• Sinbad the Sailor: The First Voyage — one of the tales told within the nights
• The Fisherman and the Genie — another Arabian Nights adventure
• Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves — treasure, danger, and quick wits