Recent scholarship has noted Ibn Taymiyya’s unexpected arguments for universal salvation of unbelievers and traced some of the ensuing debate up to the present. This presentation seeks to integrate the critique of the Yemeni traditionalist theologian Ibn al-Wazir (d. 1436) into the history of this debate and suggests that the conciliatory character of his critique and of his theology more generally stems from his precarious dependence on Zaydi social networks. Ibn Taymiyya composed a short treatise dubbed Fana’ al-nar (Annihilation of the Fire) just before his death in 1328 arguing from the Qur’an and God’s mercy and wisdom that chastisement of unbelievers in Hell-Fire will come to an end. He also asserted that no Muslim consensus existed for the opposite doctrine—eternal punishment of unbelievers—because there was no agreement on this among the early Muslims (the Salaf) and any alleged later consensus was not binding. Ibn Taymiyya’s foremost disciple Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya elaborated these arguments in the mid-1340s, which precipitated a refutation of Ibn Taymiyya’s earlier treatise by Taqi al-Din al-Subki in 1348. Al-Subki countered that the Muslim community had reached consensus on eternal punishment of unbelievers and that this doctrine was affirmed by the Qur’an; Ibn Taymiyya’s view was unbelief beyond the pale of Islam. In the following century, Ibn al-Wazir also rejected Ibn Taymiyya’s view but with a more conciliatory critique that charged him not with unbelief but simply imbalance in interpreting the Qur’an. Ibn al-Wazir’s lenient criticism of Ibn Taymiyya is partially explained by the fact that they shared a traditionalist approach to theological reasoning that rejected Ash‘ari and Mu‘tazili Kalam. But more fundamentally Ibn al-Wazir adopted a distinctively conciliatory style that sought out commonalities across theological divides and avoided charging opposing views with unbelief. Ibn al-Wazir’s conciliatory posture on Ibn Taymiyya’s universalism and other theological matters probably derived from the fact that, while he abandoned the Mu‘tazili theology dominant among Yemeni Zaydis in favor of traditionalist Sunni doctrines, he continued to live and work within Zaydi familial and scholarly networks. A more combative style would have made it difficult for Ibn al-Wazir to sustain his traditionalism both at home among the Zaydis in the Yemeni highlands and during his visits to Sunni scholars in Mecca and the lowlands of Yemen.