Also known as: Curumo, Saruman The White, Saruman Of Many Colours, Sharkey, Curunir
Curumo, called by the Elves Curunir, "Man of Skill," and by Men Saruman, was a Maia of Aule and the chief of the order of the Istari sent over Sea in the Third Age to rouse the free peoples against Sauron. Greatest in knowledge of the five and accounted their head, he was learned above all in the lore of the Rings of Power and the devices of the Enemy. The Stewards of Gondor granted him the keeping of the ancient Numenorean tower of Orthanc within the ring of Isengard, and there he dwelt and studied; but his long delving into the arts of the Enemy turned study into desire, desire into ambition, and pride at the last into treachery.
Through the palantir of Orthanc he was drawn into the snare of Sauron, who showed him enough to make him first a servant in heart and then a would-be rival, scheming to seize the One Ring for himself. He took the title Saruman of Many Colours, bred the fighting Uruk-hai together with a host of wolves and wild Dunlendings, and felled the old forests of Nan Curunir to feed his furnaces of war. He held Gandalf captive atop Orthanc and loosed his armies upon Rohan -- only for them to be broken at Helm's Deep, and for the Ents, roused at last by the ruin of their trees, to drown Isengard and pen him in his own tower.
Cast out of the order and stripped of his staff by Gandalf -- his honeyed voice his last and most dangerous weapon -- Saruman dwindled into spite. Freed from Orthanc, he made his crawling way north and seized the leaderless Shire, ruling it as a mean tyrant under the name Sharkey, until the returning hobbits cast him out. There upon the very step of Bag End his long-abused servant Grima Wormtongue turned and slew him; and the grey mist that rose from his body looked west toward Valinor, and was blown away upon a cold wind into nothing.