Abū Saʿīd ibn Yūnus said, “He was born in 154 AH and died in 231 AH (1).”
Ibn Ḥibbān added, “He passed away in the middle of the month of Ṣafar (2).”
I say: He possessed a vast store of knowledge; he was thoroughly acquainted with hadith and with the chronicle of people, keen in issuing legal opinions, truthful, and devout. I do not know what al-Nasāʾī noticed in him that caused him to declare him weak—on one occasion he even said, “He is not reliable.”
That censure is invalid, for the Two Shaykhs relied on his narrations, and I know of no objectionable report from him that would justify citing one.
Aslam ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said: “Baqī ibn Makhlad narrated to us that Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr heard the Muwatta from Mālik seventeen times (3).”
I further state: al-Bukhārī transmitted—through Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh—from Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr, and I myself heard the Muwatta through this chain from our shaykh Abū al-Ḥusayn the ḥāfiẓ: Mukram informed us; Hamza informed us; the jurist Naṣr informed us; the Mīmāsī informed us; Ibn Waṣīf al-Ghazzī informed us; al-Ḥasan ibn al-Faraj in Gaza informed us; Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr narrated to us, from Mālik.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Tamīmī, Aḥmad ibn Hibat Allāh, and Zaynab bint Kindī—by reading—also informed us, from al-Muʾayyad al-Ṭūsī, that Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Furāwī (4)… and they likewise related to us from Zaynab al-Shaʿriyya, from Ismāʿīl al-Qārī, and they narrated to us from ʿAbd al-Muʿizz