Traces of Iranian Shahrzad Legend in Tawfigh al-Hakim's Shahrzad Drama

The legend of Shahrzad as the most famous legend of One Thousand and One Nights has inspired a significant number of works in the Arab Literature. Being inspired by this work, Tawfigh al-Hakim created his beautiful play called Shahrzad which has been created a magnum opus in play writing by so many literary critics. The analysis of this play and comparison of it with the legend of Shahrzad in A Thousand and One Nights indicates that Hakim has used the character of Shahrzad as the deep structure of his play and through a literary manipulation has succeeded to give his play a symbolic and mystical form and has presented A Thousand and One Nights as the highest type of thought. A comparison of these two literary works shows not only the effect of Persian culture on the literature all over the world but also clarifies similarities and dissimilarities between Persian and Arab culture. The present paper is an attempt to indicate similarities and differences in content and form of the two works through the use of content analysis and comparative method.