Attempts at Reconciliation Between Ash'Arism And Maturidism The Case of Taj Al-Din Al-Subki and His Al-Qasida

Asb'arism and Maturidism, the two important branches of Sunnism, played significant roles both intellectually and socially in the formation of Islamic thought. The relations between these two schools developed in two distinct forms in the Islamic East and the West in parallel to changing regional contexts. In Khorasan and Transoxiana, severe conflicts and tensions, signs of which were clearly evident in botb intellectual and social levels, dominated the relationship and continued unabated nearly three centuries. In contrast, in the Western regions, in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, the relations generally followed a conciliatory path. Attempts at reconciliation between the two schools, nourished by the socio-political Sunni restructuring during the period after the fall of the Shiite Fatimids, reached its peak with Taj al-Din al-Subki (d. 771/1370).His personal concern for this matter, reflected in his writings, led to the emergence of a new genre that emphasized the superficiality of the theological differences between Ash'arites and Hanafis. This essay briefly touches upon the historical background to the attempts of reconciliation and then discusses the role of al-Subki and his al-Qasida al-Nuniyya in this process