Right before her execution, Dunyazad requested King Shahryar to let Shahrazad tell her one last tale before her death, and here started Shahrazad’s clever scheme to liberate Shahryar from his engrossing feelings of rage and spare the women in the empire his revenge. On the night of her suicidal wedding, Shahrazad begged Shahryar for her sister’s company as her last wish. Most of the tales that have enjoyed popularity in the West are lighthearted and pleasing to the younger generation, such as “Aladdin and His Lamp.” I will either survive or be a sacrifice for Muslim girls and a reason for their salvation.” When her father tried to dissuade her, she said: “For God’s sake, dear Father, let me marry this king. This broad knowledge together with her boundless imagination and storytelling skills would be her only defense after consenting to the perilous marriage.
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Despite her young age, she read a thousand books that she preciously kept in her house.
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Shahrazad was scholarly informed about the histories of the neighboring and distant kingdoms, their kings’ biographies, their poets, wars, victories, and defeats. He continued doing this until almost no girls were left in the kingdom except Shahrazad and her younger sister Dunyazad, who were the daughters of one of Shahryar’s closest viziers.īeing a highly intelligent and well-educated young woman, Shahrazad accepted marrying Shahryar to emancipate him from the shackles of his traumatic and misogynistic practice of feminicide, and to spare other women from his retaliatory wrath and blind-revenge. Incensed by the betrayal of his unfaithful wife whom he found sleeping with a black slave, the Sasanian king Shahryar decided to take vengeance against all womankind by marrying a woman every single night and beheading her the following morning.įor three years, Shahryar married hundreds of virgin wives, deflowered them, and then executed them so they would not have the opportunity to cheat on him. “One Thousand and One Nights” (the literal translation of the original Arabic title: Alf Laylah wa Laylah), or “The Arabian Nights” as Richard Burton preferred to designate them in his 1885 translation, are tales narrated by the world-famous character Shahrazad to her husband Shahryar to prevent her death.