Islamic mysticism and Sufi scholarship

R. A. Nicholson

1868 – 1945

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson was an English Arabist and Islamicist at Cambridge widely regarded as the greatest Western scholar of Sufi poetry and mysticism of his era, producing the first critical editions and complete English translations of Rumi's Masnavi (8 vols., 1925–1940) along with Studies in Islamic Mysticism (1921) and The Mystics of Islam (1914). His command of Arabic and Persian allowed him to work directly from manuscript sources, producing editions and translations meeting the highest philological standards while remaining accessible to non-specialist readers. His translations opened the riches of Islamic mystical poetry — Rumi, al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi's circle — to Western esotericists and spiritual seekers who found in Sufism a living parallel to the mystical currents of the Western tradition.