of the Mālikī school—that he said: ‘Al-Ashʿarī remained a Muʿtazilī for forty years, then announced his repentance, abandoning the subsidiary doctrines while retaining the fundamental principles.’”

Abū Nasr said: “These are the words of someone well acquainted with al-Ashʿarī’s doctrine and his recantation.”

I say: The reason for this lies in the premises of this argument and others like it, which he did not refute. Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī also mentions that the Muʿtazilah are aligned with the philosophers in this respect. He states in his al-Maqālāt:

“Praise be to Allah, who has shown us the error of those who err, the blindness of the blind, and the bewilderment of the bewildered—those who denied the attributes of the Lord of all worlds and said that Allah—exalted be His praise and sanctified be His names—has no attributes, and that He has no knowledge, no power, no life, no hearing, no sight, and no might