Fifth Principle: One should not rely on Ibn Ḥibbān’s declarations of reliability.

As you have already seen, the majority of scholars reject the hadith of an unknown narrator in both of its forms. Ibn Ḥibbān, however, departed from this consensus: he accepted such narrations, used them as proof, and even included them in his Sahih. Al-Hāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar states in Lisān al-Mīzān:

“Ibn Ḥibbān said: ‘Anyone whose hadith is munkar (objectionable), even if only slightly, may not be deemed reliable until his narrations have been thoroughly examined. Nevertheless, if he transmits oddities yet also agrees with the trustworthy narrators in other reports, he is considered upright and his narration is accepted, for people are presumed to be sound and just unless something warranting criticism becomes apparent—whereupon he is censured in proportion to the flaw that has appeared. This, he claims, is the ruling for those well-known among…’”}
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