who regarded the Ashʿarites alone as Sunnis. For example, the Moroccan Sufi Ahmad ibn ʿAdschiba (d. 1809) stated in his commentary on Fatiha: “As far as the Sunnis are concerned, it is the Ashʿarites and those who follow in their correct belief.“ Conversely, there were also scholars who excluded the Ashʿarites from Sunnism. The Andalusian scholar Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) said that Abu l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī belonged to the Murji'a, namely those who were particularly far removed from the Sunnis in terms of faith. Twentieth-century Syrian-Albanian Athari Salafi theologian Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani rejected extremism in excluding Ash'aris from Sunni Islam. He believed that despite that their fundamental differences from Atharis, not every Ash'ari is to be excluded from Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama'ah, unless they openly disapprove of the doctrines of the Salaf (mad'hab as-Salaf). According to Albani:"I do not share [the view of] some of the noble scholars of the past and present that we say about a group from the [many] Islamic groups that it is not from Ahlus-Sunnah due to its deviation in one issue or another... as for whether the Ash’aris or the Maaturidis are from Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaa’ah, I say that they are from Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaa’ah in many things related to aqidah but in other aqidah issues they have deviated away from Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaa’ah.. I don’t hold that we should say that they are not from Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaa’ah whatsoever" Sunnism in general and in a specific sense The Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) distinguished in his work Minhāj as-sunna between Sunnis in the general sense (ahl as-unna al-ʿāmma) and Sunnis in the special sense (ahl as-sunna al-ḫāṣṣa). Sunnis in the general sense are all Muslims who recognize the caliphate of the three caliphs (Abū Bakr, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān). In his opinion, this includes all Islamic groups except the Shiite Rafidites. Sunnis in the special sense are only the "people of the hadith" (ahl al-ḥadīṯ). İsmail Hakkı İzmirli, who took over the distinction between a broader and narrower circle of Sunnis from Ibn Taimiya, said that Kullabiyya and the Ashʿarīyya are Sunnis in the general sense, while the Salafiyya represent Sunnis in the specific sense. About the Maturidiyya he only says that they are closer to the Salafiyya than the Ashʿariyya because they excel more in Fiqh than in Kalām. The Saudi scholar Muhammad Ibn al-ʿUthaimin (d. 2001), who like Ibn Taimiya differentiated