Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

Drawn to Arabic and Persian literature, this English orientalist spent most of his academic life at the University of Cambridge, where he became one of the leading Western scholars of Islamic mysticism. He is especially remembered for his work on Sufism and for making major Persian texts more accessible to English-speaking readers.

Among his most influential achievements were his studies and translations of Jalal al-Din Rumi, including work on the Masnavi, as well as important scholarship on Ibn Arabi and other Sufi writers. His writing combined close textual study with a clear sense of the spiritual and literary power of the works he edited and translated.

Although he wrote for scholars, his work had a much wider reach: for many readers in English, he was one of the main gateways into classical Persian poetry and Islamic thought. That lasting influence is a big reason his name still appears so often wherever Rumi, Sufism, and the history of Oriental studies are discussed.