Story Week 6: Scheherazade and the Sultan

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Listen children and I will tell you the tale of an evil Sultan, his valiant vizier, and the vizier's brave and beautiful daughters.

Once upon a time, in the Persian lands of old, there lived a Sultan who developed an unceasing hatred for all womankind. His wife had shown herself to be faithless, so the Sultan believed that a woman's beauty hid the soul of a viper. He sought to vent his fury and quench his thirst for vengeance on all the women of the land.

Every night the hateful Sultan would marry a different woman. The following morning, the villainous Sultan ordered his long suffering vizier to put that poor woman to death. The vizier was frightened by the power of the Sultan, but he could not follow an order so vile. Every day the vizier would pretend to strangle an innocent woman, then help her to escape the palace.

The compassionate vizier had two daughters, identical twins named Scheherazade and Dinarzade. These daughters who were fair of face, fierce, and fearless helped their father to hide and protect the sinless women. Some of these women escaped the malevolent Sultan carrying a seed that was planted on their wedding night. When the first of these seeds ripened into a bouncing baby boy, the vizier's daughters went to their father with a plan.

The tormented vizier did no like this plan of his daughters' making, but he eventually agreed. Scheherazade was to marry the Sultan, but she was not to die. The divine and daring Scheherazade distracted the Sultan with a series of stories while her sister poisoned his food. Finally, the land was free of the depredations of the wicked Sultan. The Sultan's previously hidden son, a chubby baby who was quick to laugh, was placed on the throne. The courageous vizier and his plucky daughters acted as regents for the cheerful cherub. They raised the boy to rule with kindness, fairness, and grace. The kingdom rejoiced.


Author's Note: In the framework story for Arabian Nights, Scheherazade spends 1,001 nights telling stories to Sultan Schahriar. As in my story, he begins marrying a new woman each night and killing her the next day after having his unfaithful wife killed. Scheherazade is the daughter of the grand vizier, the man who is forced to murder the women each day. Scheherezade convinces her father to marry her to the Sultan. Each night she begins telling her story, which is mostly a series of "nested" stories. She stops each morning, without having finished the story, and the Sultan allows her to live so that she can complete it. Over the course of the 1,001 nights, he falls in love with her and decides to not have her put to death. That story felt like it was too happy of an end for a Sultan that had killed countless women. So, I chose for Scheherazade and her sister to kill him. Also, I didn't want the women to die unnecessarily, so had the vizier and his daughters helping them to escape and hiding them. It was likely that at least one of these saved women would end up being pregnant. I thought that the birth of one of these children would provide a catalyst to the Sultan's comeuppance and an heir to replace him.


Bibliography: "Scheherezade," The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang. Web Source.

Reading Notes: Turkish Fairy Tales, Part B

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- The story about the Imp of the Well begins with a woodcutter whose wife is a particularly controlling stereotype of a domineering wife. The woodcutter goes off into the mountains to cut wood, and is followed by his terrible wife. She falls into a well, and the woodcutter chooses to leave her there. He comes back the next day, feeling guilty, and lowers a rope to rescue her. Instead, an imp climbs the rope and tells the woodcutter that his peaceful existence in the well had been interrupted by a terrible woman.
- The story doesn't provide any details about the imp's existence in the well, how he survived and ate down there, or the events that transpired after the woodcutter's wife falls down there.
- I'd like to tell the story of the well and the imp's introduction to the harridan wife. The well would need to be much larger that it appears, furnished and with access to food. This will have the added bonus of giving the angry woman a comfortable life, instead of a slow death by starvation. After falling into the well, the woman and the imp would have a confrontation, which leads to the imp choosing to climb out on the woodcutter's rope.


Bibliography: Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos. Web Source.

Reading Notes: Turkish Fairy Tales, Part A

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- The story about the boy who set out to find Fear stood out to me the most of the various Turkish fairy tales. I liked it because it calls into question the idea that everyone is afraid of the same thing. Fear is in the eye of the beholder, and it can wear many faces.
- The story went through many sections with the boy trying to find fear. However, the section that I felt needed to be expanded was the section about him becoming the shah. Everyone assumes that he will be dead the next day, as whoever becomes shah is always dead on the following day. The boy doesn't die, but the story never explains why he was expected to. Was there some kind of curse that was killing the new shahs? Was someone murdering them out of jealousy or anger? How does the sultana feel about the dead shahs, and does she have anything to do with it?
- I would like to tell a story that focuses on this set of events. I like the idea that the new shahs are getting murdered, possibly by a vizier who wanted to keep power for himself.
- Perhaps the vizier poisons the new shah with something that takes effect when mixed with the adrenaline rush of a fear response, making it look as though they died of fear. When the boy lives, the vizier ingests some. When the bird flies out of the soup, the boy (whose poison has worn off) gets to experience fear, and the evil vizier dies by his own poison.


Bibliography: Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos. Web Source.