Reynold A. Nicholson

The Text Beneath the Versions

Poetry by Reynold A. Nicholson 51
First attested
1898His first book, Selected Poems from the Dívání Shamsi Tabríz (Cambridge University Press, 1898), whose preface carries both the phrase "the greatest mystical poet of any age" and the statement that the book is addressed to students of Persian rather than to lovers of literature. The Masnavi edition is then dated by its own signed prefatory matter: the introduction to the translation of Books I-II, Cambridge, December 1925, with a postscript on the death of E. G. Browne; the introduction to Books III-IV, April 1930, announcing that the Qoniya manuscript of 677 A.H. is the base text from Book III, verse 2836 onward; the introduction completing the translation, signed 19 April 1933; and Volume VIII, the commentary on Books III-VI, imprinted 1940.

The Rumi that became an American best-seller is Nicholson's literal English at one remove: Barks said himself he had "nothing to be faithful to, except what the scholars give", and the paraphrase he chose is the side of the dilemma Nicholson had named, and refused, in December 1925.

Cambridge Arabist whose eight-volume Masnavi of 1925-40 is the literal English that Coleman Barks reworked.

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson (1868-1945) lectured in Persian at Cambridge from 1902 and held the Sir Thomas Adams's Chair of Arabic from 1926 to 1933. His first book, of 1898, called Rumi "the greatest mystical poet of any age" and was addressed, its preface said, to students of Persian rather than to lovers of literature. Introducing the translation in December 1925 he named the trap: a faithful version "must be to a large extent unintelligible", an intelligible one becomes "a free and copious paraphrase". He took the faithful side, and between 1925 and 1940 published the Masnavi in eight volumes — Persian text, translation, commentary, the first complete each. Coleman Barks (1937-2026), who read no Persian, made his versions from this English, from Arberry's, and from unpublished literals by John Moyne.

Light

Rumi's whole poem in English beside the Persian, with a commentary, done once and not since. Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar, Iran's own editor of Rumi, wrote a homage to him, and Hasan Lāhūtī put his English commentary back into Persian in 1995.

Shadow

Ibrahim Gamard reports that he never visited or lived in a Middle Eastern country, believing the distance made him a more objective scholar, and faults his ear for Persian idiom and his reading of Rumi through Ibn al-ʿArabī. The bawdy tales he put into Latin.

Sources and verification13 sources · 32 links

Primary source

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Dívání Shamsi Tabríz, 1898, Cambridge University Press; Preface, pp. viii-ix. Free scan: archive.org item in.ernet.dli.2015.52959That the phrase "the greatest mystical poet of any age" is his, in print, in 1898, closing the paragraph on p. viii — he trusts that his explanatory notes "may nevertheless contribute to a better appreciation of the greatest mystical poet of any age"; and that he named his reader on the page following — a book "addressed to students of Persian rather than to lovers of literature". The preface runs on past the phrase, through the notice of Whinfield and Redhouse, the Abu Tammam comparison and the defence of prose translation. This is the volume Arberry later replaced, and it is a selection, not the Dīvān.
  • Jalálu'ddín Rúmí; edited, translated and annotated by Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, Edited from the Oldest Manuscripts Available, with Critical Notes, Translation and Commentary, 8 vols, "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial" New Series IV, 1926, Volume II, containing the translation of the First and Second Books; Introduction, signed "Reynold A. Nicholson, Cambridge, December 1925". Free scan: archive.org item in.ernet.dli.2015.151299The translator's dilemma in his own words: "if his translation is faithful, it must be to a large extent unintelligible" and "if he tries to make it intelligible throughout he must often substitute for the exact rendering a free and copious paraphrase embodying matter which properly belongs to a commentary". Also that the version is "intended primarily as an aid to students of Persian" and gives "the literal sense of the words translated without explaining either their metaphorical or their mystical sense"; his principle that "translation is one thing, interpretation another"; his refusal to omit the coarse tales — "many pages are disfigured by anecdotes worthy of an Apuleius or Petronius", but to omit them, he says, "would defeat the object I have in view"; that before him only Books I and II had been made accessible entire to European readers; and the postscript on the death of E. G. Browne.
  • Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, Volume IV (translation of Books III and IV), 1930, Introduction, signed "Reynold A. Nicholson, Cambridge, April 1930". Free scan: archive.org item RUMITheMathnawiVol3Vol4His own statement on the Konya manuscript and its late arrival: "I consider the Qoniya MS. (G), dated 677 A.H., to be the most authoritative text of the Mathnawi. The text of the present edition from Book III, v. 2836, to the end of Book IV is founded on that ancient and admirable MS., and in the Appendices to vol. III I have recorded those readings of G which differ from the text of my edition in the First and Second Books and in the first half of the Third Book. The present volume, therefore, contains an Appendix showing what changes the adoption of these readings would involve in the English version." This is the primary evidence that the oldest manuscript reached him only after roughly a third of the poem was edited and Englished, and the source of the corrections printed after Books III and IV.
  • Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, Volume VI (completing the translation, Books V and VI), 1934, Introduction, signed "Reynold A. Nicholson, Cambridge, April 19, 1933". Free scan: archive.org item RumiTheMathnawiVol5Vol6, whose title page is misprinted 'VOLUME V & VI CONTAINING THE TRANSLATION OF THE THIRD & FOURTH BOOKS'.The Latin policy in his own words: "This volume of the translation, like those which have preceded it, gives a literal rendering of the text in English or, where necessary, in Latin." His rejection of "the method of loose paraphrase adopted by some of my predecessors — a method full of pitfalls for the student". His reaffirmation that "the words I applied to the author of the Mathnawi thirty-five years ago, 'the greatest mystical poet of any age', seem to me no more than just" — fixing the 1898 phrase as his own. Also his plan for the commentary, and his verdict that the so-called Seventh Book of the Bulaq edition "is a patent forgery".
  • Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, Volume VIII (commentary on the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Books, with indices to Volumes VII and VIII), 1940, Cambridge University Press for the Trustees of the "E. J. W. Gibb Memorial", published by Luzac, 1940. Free scan: archive.org item mathnawinicholsonvol8The 1940 end date of the project; the title page describing him as "Emeritus Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic, Fellow of Trinity College, and sometime Lecturer in Persian in the University of Cambridge"; and the Trustees' list, which records Nicholson as a trustee of the Gibb Memorial and E. G. Browne's death on 5 January 1926.

Scholarship

  • Ibrahim Gamard, About R. A. Nicholson and his Translation and Commentary on the Masnavi, dar-al-masnavi.org/about_nicholson.html, open access. The page names its own sources: Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (2000), pp. 531-33; Marta Simidchieva and Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar (trans. Sorkhabi) in Mawlana Rumi ReviewThat the eight volumes of 1925-40 are "the first critical Persian edition of Rumi's Masnavi, the first full translation of it into English, and the first commentary on the entire work in English"; that the oldest manuscript is a copy of the one owned by Ḥusām al-Dīn Chalabī, "copied in 1278 CE--five years after Mawlânâ Rûmî's death", and that Nicholson "did not obtain his own copy of the oldest manuscript until he had translated (and edited the Persian text of) about of a third of the Masnavi"; the criticisms repeated in the Shadow — over-interpreting the Masnavi "via the theosophy of Ibnu 'l-`Arabi", "deficiencies in understanding Persian idioms (he believed he would be a 'more objective' scholar by never visiting or living in Middle Eastern countries)", and "over-prudishly translating 'lewd' words and phrases in the Masnavi into Latin", with the example at Book IV, line 511 ("Materterae si testiculi essent, ea avunculus esset"); that Barks worked from Moyne's literals and from the Arberry and Nicholson translations; that his Persian text has been reprinted many times in Iran and his commentary translated into Persian by Hasan Lāhūtī in 1995; that Nicholson was Arberry's "teacher and predecessor at Cambridge University", and that Arberry's re-translation dropped seven of Nicholson's 1898 ghazals now not considered authentic Rumi poems (Nicholson's nos. IV, VIII, XII, XVII, XXXI, XXXIII, XLIV); and that Nicholson published the first English notice of Fīhi mā fīhi in a 1924 article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Note that Gamard's bibliographic note misplaces the Furūzānfar homage in vol. 1 of the Mawlana Rumi Review; it is in vol. 2.
  • Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalāl al-Din Rumi, rev. ed., 2008, Oneworld; first edition 2000, where Gamard names pp. 531-33 as the account of NicholsonThe standard study of Rumi's textual history and Western reception, and the register's named defence against fabricated Rūmī attributions; it is the work Gamard credits for the biographical detail repeated here, and the place to check every claim in this entry that rests on Gamard's summary. Named as the check, not read directly for this entry.

The tradition itself

  • R. A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, 8 vols, 1925, 1925–40The esoteric reading given on this entry

Where this claim originates

  • Kat Thornton, Rumi for the New-Age Soul: Coleman Barks and the Problems of Popular Translations, Ajam Media Collective, 2015, 9 March 2015, open accessBarks's own account of his method, quoted there: "Of course, as I work on these poems, I don't have the Persian to consult. I literally have nothing to be faithful to, except what the scholars give." Also that he published versions based on unpublished Moyne translations as well as on Arberry and Nicholson translations and other primary translations — the source, with Gamard, for the three named in the entry; and Thornton's sales figure, over 500,000 copies, in a market where a book of poetry rarely sells more than 10,000.
  • Rozina Ali, The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi, The New Yorker, 2017, 5 January 2017That Rumi is "often described as" the best-selling poet in the United States — a description in circulation rather than a measured figure — and the argument that the Barks versions carry the poems without their Islamic frame. Interviews Barks and Omid Safi.
  • Here & Now (WBUR/NPR), Remembering poet, writer and translator Coleman Barks, 2026, 12 March 2026: "died last month at the age of 88"That Coleman Barks died in February 2026 — against the editor's brief for this entry, which describes him as living. Gamard's dar-al-masnavi pages now print "Coleman Barks (1937-2026)", as does this catalogue's shipped entry out-beyond-ideas.

Further reading

  • Marta Simidchieva, Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi of R. A. Nicholson, Mawlana Rumi Review, vol. 1, 2010, Exeter: Archetype, pp. 33-68The fullest article-length study of Nicholson's Rumi, and the fuller account behind Gamard's summary of his method and its critics. The same journal carries a second treatment of the translation itself — Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari and Reza Abbasi, 'A Syntactic Analysis of Metaphorical Phrases in R. A. Nicholson's Translation of the Mathnawi', vol. 2 (2011), pp. 167-182. Neither read for this entry.
  • Badīʿ al-Zamān Furūzānfar; translated from the Persian by Rasoul Sorkhabi, Homage to Professor Nicholson, Mawlana Rumi Review, vol. 2, 2011, Exeter: Archetype, pp. 125-134. Volume, year and pagination taken from the journal's own table of contents; Gamard's bibliographic note misplaces the article in vol. 1 (2010), which contains no such item.The homage named in the Light: the Persian editor of the Dīvān and of Fīhi mā fīhi writing on the Cambridge editor of the Masnavi. Not read for this entry, and the date and occasion of the Persian original are not given in the contents listing. Brill credits the piece to Furūzānfar alone; the Sorkhabi translation credit comes from Gamard.

Linked entries

  • Set againstThe Tomb at KonyaAttested

    The oldest manuscript of the poem was copied at Konya in 1278, five years after Rumi's death, and is kept there. Nicholson worked from a copy of it in Cambridge and, on Gamard's account, never visited or lived in a Middle Eastern country, holding that the distance made him the more objective scholar.

  • Transmitted intoThe Dream of the Treasure in CairoAttested

    Book VI reached English only in his translation, the volume published in 1934 whose introduction he signed at Cambridge on 19 April 1933. The chapter heading that tale turns on, and the line that the treasure would really and truly be gained only in Cairo, are his wording.

  • Set againstSultan WaladAttested

    Two men who built the afterlife of Rumi's words. The son took his father's seat at Konya in 1284 and made an order out of them; the professor who never left Europe made a text — Persian, English and commentary, finished in 1940.

  • Set againstFīhi Mā FīhiAttested

    The Discourses came into English through Arberry, not Nicholson. Arberry began studying with Nicholson at Cambridge in 1927, edited his teacher's posthumous Rumi: Poet and Mystic in 1950, and turned to the prose in 1961; Lewis calls him Nicholson's successor.

  • Set againstOut Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and RightdoingAttested

    Barks is routinely said to have re-Englished Nicholson, and for the Masnavi he largely did; this quatrain came instead through John Moyne's literal, and when Barks made a second version of it from Arberry for Birdsong in 1993 it opened with a desert.

  • Gave rise toThe Chickpea to the CookAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's, from his 1930 translation of Books III and IV; his printed Persian from Book III, v. 2836 to the end of Book IV is founded on the Qoniya manuscript of 677 A.H./1278, so this story falls in the stretch he edited from the oldest surviving copy.

  • Received fromThe Song of the ReedAttested

    The English on this page is his — printed in 1926 from late manuscripts, and corrected by him in 1930 once the Konya copy reached him. The English versions made from his English rather than from the Persian, Barks's among them, inherit the uncorrected line.

  • Gave rise toThe Elephant in the DarkAttested

    The English quoted here is Nicholson's, from his 1930 translation of Book III; his 1940 commentary is where Rūmī's departure from Sanāʾī and al-Ghazālī is named, and where Ghazālī's own conclusion is quoted against it.

  • Gave rise toThe King and the HandmaidenAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toThe Merchant and the ParrotAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toThe Old HarperAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toThe Moaning PillarAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toThe Grammarian and the BoatmanAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation; he kept maḥw and naḥw in italics so the Persian pun survives the English.

  • Gave rise toWho Is at the Door?Attested

    The English is Nicholson's 1926 translation, which keeps the needle and camel lines that Whinfield's 1887 abridgement cut.

  • Gave rise toThe Chinese and the Greek PaintersAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1926 translation, which he himself flagged in 1930 as differing from the Konya manuscript in five of these fourteen lines.

  • Gave rise toʿAlī and the KnightAttested

    The English and the footnotes on kushtí and on partnership are Nicholson's 1926 translation.

  • Gave rise toMoses and the ShepherdAttested

    The English and the note on each people's “idiom” are Nicholson's 1926 translation; his 1930 Appendix gives the Konya manuscript's different reading at v. 1759.

  • Gave rise toThe Man Who Planted ThornsAttested

    The English, the running head and the gloss on “the days are between us” are Nicholson's 1926 translation.

  • Gave rise toThe Bear and the FoolAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1926 translation, which keeps the headings marking each place where the tale breaks off and resumes.

  • Gave rise toDaqūqī and the Seven CandlesAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1930 translation of Book III, and the reading of the Seven Candles as the Abdāl is from his commentary.

  • Gave rise toThe Greengrocer and the ParrotAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toThe Lion and the HareAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book I, checked against the page images of that printing.

  • Gave rise toNeither Christian nor JewAttested

    Every English line here is Nicholson's 1898 prose; he also put the first six couplets into rhymed verse in Appendix II, beginning “Lo, for I to myself am unknown”.

  • Gave rise toEvery Form You SeeAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; he also made the whole ode into rhymed quatrains, “Poor copies out of heaven's original”, in Appendix II.

  • Gave rise toSeek Him in the PlacelessAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his notes gloss the fifth couplet's “Absolute” as yaqīn and revise his own reading of the eighth.

  • Gave rise toUp, O Ye LoversAttested

    This is Nicholson's own rhymed version from Appendix II, made to follow the rhyme arrangement of the Persian; his prose of the same couplets is on p. 141.

  • Gave rise toWhy Does Not the Soul Take WingAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his notes supply the Qurʾān verse behind the falcon's “Return” and the darvish custom behind the vestibule.

  • Gave rise toThe Man of GodAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose, one line to each half-couplet, nineteen of the twenty lines beginning “The man of God”.

  • Gave rise toOn the Day of My DeathAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his text departs from his own base manuscript in two places, and his apparatus says where.

  • Gave rise toEvery Moment the Voice of LoveAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his note on the opening couplet sets aside Redhouse's rendering of its second line (“not as Redhouse”).

  • Gave rise toWhen the Names Were NotAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his note points readers to Professor Falconer's verse rendering and to two poems of Henry Vaughan.

  • Gave rise toShow Thy FaceAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his notes correct his own rendering of couplet 17 and trace the lantern story to Diogenes the Cynic.

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