Scheherazade

Scheherazade /ʃəˌhɛrəˈzɑːdᵊ/, or "Shahrazad" (Persian: شهرازاد - Šahrāzād‎‎), is a legendary queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

Narration

The story goes that Shahryar (Persian: شهریار - Šahryār‎‎, "server of the realm" or 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 (Persian: 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.

Shahrzad (TV Series 2015-)

Shahrzad (Persian: شهرزاد) is an Iranian series distributed directly as DVD for Home Video. The series is a romantic historical drama co-written and directed by Hassan Fathi. The story line is set around and after the 1953 Iranian coup d'état. The series stars Taraneh Alidousti, Shahab Hosseini, Ali Nassirian, and Mostafa Zamani.

Synopsis

Shahrzad played by Taraneh Alidoosti is a medical student who is in love with Farhad.

Farhad played by Mostafa Zamani is a journalist who works for Bakhtar Emrooz newspaper. He is a supporter of Mohammad Mossadegh.

Official Site

References

Shahrzad (Reza Kamal)

Reza Kamal (1898-11 September 1937), better known by his nickname Shahrzad or Scheherazade, was an Iranian dramatist and playwright. He was born in Tehran. From his childhood he liked One Thousand and One Nights and its storyteller Scheherazade. Because of this interest, he chose Shahrzad as his nickname years later. He studied French language and literature in Saint-Louis when he was young. Since he was interested in French literature, he translated some French plays to Persian on those years and then started to adopt some plays, to write some original plays and to direct some of his own plays. Since he lived under a very suppressive government with a very restrictive censorship, he usually used historical and mythical characters and stories to talk about his time. One of the very important characteristics of his plays was using female characters as his main characters. He committed suicide on 11 September 1937.

Some of his plays