Sinbad the sailor—also spelled Sindbad—is a character of Arabic literature and hero of The Thousand and One Nights, stories based on the trials of seafaring merchants from Iraq. The narrative frame assigns the stories to Scheherazade, a Persian princess whose royal husband's lack of faith in female fidelity prompts him to execute each of his wives the morning after he marries them. Sheherazade tells the stories night after night, so intriguing her husband that day after day he extends her life long enough to hear the next night's installment.