Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868–1945) was an English scholar of Islamic literature and mysticism. Born in Keighley, Yorkshire, he studied at Cambridge and spent his career there, becoming professor of Arabic in 1926. A Literary History of the Arabs (1907) long served as the standard introduction to Arabic literature in English, and The Mystics of Islam and Studies in Islamic Mysticism made Sufism known to Western readers. His life's work was the edition, translation and commentary of the Masnavi of the Persian poet Rumi, published in eight volumes between 1925 and 1940.