Introduction

In the chronicles of the ancient dynasty of the Sassanidae,
who reigned for about four hundred years, from Persia to the borders
of China, beyond the great river Ganges itself, we read the praises
of one of the kings of this race, who was said to be the best
monarch of his time. His subjects loved him, and his neighbors
feared him, and when he died he left his kingdom in a more prosperous
and powerful condition than any king had done before him.

The two sons who survived him loved each other tenderly, and it was
a real grief to the elder, Schahriar, that the laws of the empire
forbade him to share his dominions with his brother Schahzeman.
Indeed, after ten years, during which this state of things had
not ceased to trouble him, Schahriar cut off the country of Great
Tartary from the Persian Empire and made his brother king.

Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the world,
and his greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour,
and to give her the finest dresses and the most beautiful jewels.
It was therefore with the deepest shame and sorrow that he
accidentally discovered, after several years, that she had deceived
him completely, and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad,
that he felt himself obliged to carry out the law of the land,
and order the grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so
heavy that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was
quite sure that at bottom all women were as wicked as the sultana,
if you could only find them out, and that the fewer the world
contained the better. So every evening he married a fresh wife
and had her strangled the following morning before the grand-vizir,
whose duty it was to provide these unhappy brides for the Sultan.
The poor man fulfilled his task with reluctance, but there was
no escape, and every day saw a girl married and a wife dead.

This behaviour caused the greatest horror in the town, where nothing
was heard but cries and lamentations. In one house was a father weeping
for the loss of his daughter, in another perhaps a mother trembling
for the fate of her child; and instead of the blessings that had
formerly been heaped on the Sultan's head, the air was now full of curses.

The grand-vizir himself was the father of two daughters, of whom
the elder was called Scheherazade, and the younger Dinarzade.
Dinarzade had no particular gifts to distinguish her from other girls,
but her sister was clever and courageous in the highest degree.
Her father had given her the best masters in philosophy, medicine,
history and the fine arts, and besides all this, her beauty excelled
that of any girl in the kingdom of Persia.

One day, when the grand-vizir was talking to his eldest