The larger, incrementally accrued corpus of Thousand and One Nights, contains several cycles of tales collected within a frame structure. Most of these cycles consist of a framing story explaining the rationale behind the enframed stories, which in most instances are tales of wisdom, parables or anecdotes. The cycles, drawn from various narrative sources that originate in varied literary/cultural backgrounds and time periods, were incorporated into the corpus at different stages of its development. But the question of thematic unity in the various stories remains unresolved. This presentation will suggest that a comparative framing of the stories yields new insight on the thematic aspects of the narrative. The comparative frame comprises the following stories from Thousand and one nights: the craft and malice of women, King Jali‘ad of Hind and his vizier Shimas, King Azadbakht and his son, and King Shahbakht and his vizier al-Rahwan; and includes material drawn from the story of Tawaddud, Hayqar the sage, al-Malik Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari, Buluqiya, the thirty-nine steps of the throne and the five-and-twenty tales of the genie. These narrative cycles will be discussed focusing on the main structural and conceptual resemblances: first, their structures as framed cycles will be examined with regard to the function and plot of the framing story; second, the device of framing and the motifs in the framing story will be discussed and compared as far as they reflect an effort to represent the act of storytelling and the transmission of wisdom as a ritual process. Although the stories are of different origins (Hindi, Persian, Arabic) most of them have several motifs in common: the relation between a king, his son, and his vizier; the intervention of women in the process of succession; relationships between men and women; and the deferral of judgement or plot by the telling of stories containing some argument or wisdom. It will be argued that this procedure can be perceived as a ritual process aimed at on the one hand initiating the prince, and on the other hand regulating the process of succession. Ultimately, of course, it is the reader who is instructed and elevated. Finally, may it be argued that Thousand and one nights itself is conceptually and generically related to these narrative cycles?