A young prince, educated away from court, is summoned home by the king. Shortly after his return, the king’s favorite concubine fails in seducing him and (falsely) accuses him of attempted rape. Since the prince cannot defend himself, due to his vow of silence for seven days, each day a vizier tells the king a story to delay the prince’s execution. The concubine in turn persuades the king each day anew to punish him by death. After seven days, the prince speaks and the truth is revealed. This frame story, most likely of Pahlavi origin, was widely circulated not only in the Islamic World, but in medieval Europe, too, where it became known, among other titles, as The Seven Sages (of Rome). Although extensive work has been done for the various European versions, its Middle Eastern origin has been rather neglected in scholarly research. This paper focuses on narrative techniques and framing devices in the oldest extant Persian text, the Sindbād-nāma (12th century CE) and discusses changes and adaptations in different linguistic and cultural contexts. Through analysis of the framing and the enactments of the frame story in the embedded tales of the Sindbād-nāma, it becomes clear that the avoidance of haste and the control of one’s emotions is just as important as the warning against the “wiles of women”. Other versions have a different set of embedded tales or show adaptations in the frame story: In the Latin version Dolopathos (12th century CE), the prince becomes a monk, in the Scala Coeli (14th century) and the German version Dyocletianus’ Leben (15th century), we find enforced misogynist tendencies. This is illustrated by a closer look at the tale Canis (the faithful greyhound), a story that is included in most versions of the cycle. From a tale that is narrated to warn against haste and anger in the Sindbād-nāma, it becomes a story of a knight neglecting his family, to man trusting the words of his foolish wife. I will show that the adaptations this collection of tales underwent is not only visible in the framing, but in an individual tale as well. The frame tale and embedded tales combined serve to create a distinct “moral of the story” that varies according to the audience of a specific cultural context.