Shahryār (also Shahriār, Shahriyār or Schahryār, Persian: شهريار, meaning The Great King) is the fictional Sassanid King of kings in One Thousand and One Nights, who is told stories by his wife, Shahrazad. He ruled over a Persian Empire extended to India, over all the adjacent islands and a great way beyond the Ganges as far as China, while Shahryār’s younger brother, Shāhzamān (شاهزمان) ruled over Samarkand. There is an anomaly in the story, for the King Shahryār is a Sassanid, and thus a Zoroastrian and not a Muslim as most of the stories' characters are.