Causality in post-formative Ash'arism: Comparing al-Yusi (d. 1691) and al-Nabulusi (d. 1731) Many scholars, as well as Muslim reformers (such as Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) have argued that it was precisely due to the prevalence of Ash'ari theology (kalam) in the Muslim world in the early modern period that scientific research was not pursued. This stance is closely associated with the widespread view that this school of Islamic theology--largely dominant in North Africa during these centuries--denied natural law and secondary causation outright, arguing instead for an occasionalism in which God created the world anew at each moment. The view is most often expounded in light of the fact that such prominent Ash'ari theologians as al-Ghazali (d. 1111) denied that wool being brought into the proximity of fire would necessarily burn. More recently, Frank Griffel, while acknowledging the difficulty of al-Ghazali's texts, has shown that al-Ghazali, though working within an Ash'ari occasionalist framework, did in fact subscribe to a theory of secondary causality, most clearly so in his comparison of God's creation to a water-clock. Islamic theology in the Early Modern period has not been nearly as well studied as it has for the earlier classical or formative period, but it seems safe to say that during the 16-18th centuries--the period in which I am interested for this paper--Ash'ari theology contained multiple understandings of causality. In this paper I will argue that the Moroccan scholar al-Yusi (d. 1691) clearly accepted a theory of secondary causation within the broader reliance upon God mandated by Ash'arism, redefining the nature of socially accepted theological views during his time. While al-Yusi's stance was exceptional in that it offered a clear corrective to al-Sanusi's (d. 1490) authoritative manual of Ash'ari theology, it was not without influence, and as I will show, was cited as late as the early twentieth century in legal opinions as proof of the permissibility of studying the natural sciences. In order to better contextualize the work of al-Yusi, I will compare his views to those of his Syrian contemporary, the famed mystic and theologian 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731), whose views on causality were remarkably similar to those of al-Yusi. Through a rereading of both of their writings this paper will present a more complex and nuanced understanding of Ash'ari theology in the Early Modern period.