Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, (1868-1945) English orientalist who exercised a lasting influence on Islāmic studies.
Educated at Aberdeen University and the University of Cambridge, Nicholson was lecturer in Persian (1902–26) and Sir Thomas Adams professor of Arabic (1926–33) at Cambridge. He was a leading scholar in Islāmic literature and mysticism.
His A Literary History of the Arabs (1907) remains a standard work on that subject in English; while his many text editions and ...