Reynold A. Nicholson
Encyclopedia
Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, or R. A. Nicholson, (August 18, 1868 — August 27, 1945) was an eminent English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

, scholar of both Islamic literature
Islamic literature
Islamic literature is literature written with an Islamic perspective, in any language.The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade...

 and Islamic mysticism
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...

, and widely regarded as one of the greatest Rumi scholars and translators in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Life

Son of paleontologist Henry Alleyne Nicholson
Henry Alleyne Nicholson
Henry Alleyne Nicholson was a British palaeontologist and zoologist.The son of Dr. John Nicholson, a biblical scholar, was born at Penrith, Cumbria on 11 September 1844. He was educated at Appleby Grammar School and at the universities of Göttingen and Edinburgh...

, Nicholson was born in Keighley
Keighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...

, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and died in Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. Educated at Aberdeen University and the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, Nicholson became lecturer in the Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 (1902–26) and Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic
Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic
Sir Thomas Adams’ Professor of Arabic – the title is used at Cambridge University because Sir Thomas Adams, 1st Baronet , Lord Mayor of London in 1645, gave to Cambridge University the money needed to create the first Professorship of Arabic....

 at Cambridge (1926–1933). He is considered a leading scholar in Islamic literature
Islamic literature
Islamic literature is literature written with an Islamic perspective, in any language.The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade...

 and Islamic mysticism
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...

 who exercised a lasting influence on Islamic studies
Islamic studies
In a Muslim context, Islamic studies can be an umbrella term for all virtually all of academia, both originally researched and as defined by the Islamization of knowledge...

. He was able to study and translate major Sufi texts in Arabic, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, and Ottoman Turkish
Ottoman Turkish language
The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

 to English. Nicholson wrote two very influential books: Literary History of The Arabs (1907) and The Mystics of Islam (1914).

Works on Rumi

Nicholson's magnum opus
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

 was his work on Rumi's Masnavi
Masnavi
The Masnavi, Masnavi-I Ma'navi or Mesnevi , also written Mathnawi, Ma'navi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, the celebrated Persian Sufi saint and poet. It is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature...

, published in eight volumes between 1925 and 1940. He produced the first critical Persian edition of the Masnavi, the first full translation of it into English, and the first commentary on the entire work in English. This work has been highly influential in the field of Rumi studies worldwide.

Works on Iqbal

Being a teacher of the Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

i scholar and poet Muhammad Iqbal
Muhammad Iqbal
Sir Muhammad Iqbal , commonly referred to as Allama Iqbal , was a poet and philosopher born in Sialkot, then in the Punjab Province of British India, now in Pakistan...

, Nicholson translated Iqbal's first philosophical Persian poetry book Asrar-i-Khudi into English as The Secrets of the Self
The Secrets of the Self
Asrar-i-Khudi was the first philosophical poetry book of Allama Iqbal, the great poet-philosopher of British India and the founder of the idea of Pakistan...

.

Other significant translations

  • The Sufi treatise of Hujviri
  • Rumi's Mathnawi and Divan e Shams
    Diwan-e Shams-e Tabriz-i
    Dīvān-e Kabīr, Dīvān-e Šhams-e Tabrīzī or Dīvān-e Šhams is one of Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi's masterpieces...

  • Ibn Arabi
    Ibn Arabi
    Ibn ʿArabī was an Andalusian Moorish Sufi mystic and philosopher. His full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī .-Biography:...

    's Tarjuman al-Aswaq
  • Poetry by the Sindi
    Sindi (people)
    The Sindi were an ancient people in the Taman Peninsula and the adjacent coast of the Pontus Euxinus , in the district called Sindica, which spread between the modern towns of Temryuk and Novorossiysk...

     poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai
    Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai
    Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai was a Sindhi Sufi scholar, mystic, saint, poet, and musician. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Sindhi language...


Students

Among Nicholson's students is Arberry
Arthur John Arberry
Arthur John Arberry was a respected British orientalist. A most prolific scholar of Arabic, Persian, and Islamic studies, he was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge...

, a translator of Rumi and Quran.

See also

  • Persian literature
    Persian literature
    Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

  • Sufi poetry
    Sufi poetry
    Sufi poetry has been written in many languages, both for private devotional reading and as lyrics for music played during worship, or dhikr. Themes and styles established in Punjabi Poetry, Sindhi Poetry, Arabic poetry and mostly Persian poetry have had an enormous influence on Sufi poetry...

  • Iranology
  • Rumi
  • Iqbal
    Muhammad Iqbal
    Sir Muhammad Iqbal , commonly referred to as Allama Iqbal , was a poet and philosopher born in Sialkot, then in the Punjab Province of British India, now in Pakistan...

  • The Secrets of the Self
    The Secrets of the Self
    Asrar-i-Khudi was the first philosophical poetry book of Allama Iqbal, the great poet-philosopher of British India and the founder of the idea of Pakistan...


External links

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