Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, FBA (18 August 1868 – 27 August 1945), or R. A. Nicholson, was an eminent English orientalist, scholar of both Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism, and widely regarded as one of the greatest Rumi (Mevlana or Mawlana) scholars and translators in the English language.

The son of Henry Alleyne Nicholson, he was born at Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England and died at Chester, Cheshire.

[5][6] He was able to study and translate major Sufi texts in Arabic, Persian, Punjabi and Ottoman Turkish to English.

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

[6] Nicholson translated the famous Persian book on sufism Kashf ul Mahjoob into English which was written by the famous saint of the Subcontinent, Ali Hujwiri Daata Ganj Bakhsh[8] Being a teacher of the Indian scholar and poet, Muhammad Iqbal, Nicholson translated Iqbal's first philosophical poetry book, Asrar-i-Khudi, from Persian into English and titled it,The Secrets of the Self.