Scheherazade (Persian Shahrazād, from shahr = city + āzād = noble, free) is the *frame narrator of Alf laylah wa-laylah (One Thousand and One Nights / The Arabian Nights). The vizier's daughter who volunteers to marry the misogynist King Shahryar — who has been killing each new bride at dawn since being betrayed by his first wife — and who saves her own life and the lives of all future Persian women by telling the king cliffhanging tales for 1,001 nights. Eventually the king falls in love with her and abandons his murderous custom. One of the most famous female narrators in world literature* — and the source of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, and countless other tales.
Subject of Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Scheherazade (1888).
Scheherazade reduces to five — the number of One Thousand and One Nights.