Arabian Nights Wiki
Advertisement

Dunyazad (also called Dunyazade or Dinazade) (Persian: دنیازاد) is a fictional character in One Thousand and One Nights, the younger sister of the doomed Queen Scheherazade. In the story cycle, it is she who (at Scheherazade's instruction) initiates the tactic of cliffhanger storytelling to prevent her sister's execution by Shahryar. At the successful conclusion, she marries Shah Zaman, Shahryar's younger brother.

She is recast as a major character as the narrator of the Dunyazadiad segment of John Barth's novel Chimera.

Advertisement