As for his second report—the one that speaks of “kneading”—we shall demonstrate the mistake he made in declaring it weak, in a manner that will leave any specialist in this field with no doubt that he was in error. He ruled it defective on two counts:
The first: Yunus ibn Bukayr.
The second: al-Haytham ibn ʿImrān al-ʿAbsī.

Regarding the first alleged flaw, he clung to the scholars’ disagreement over Yunus—some rating him reliable, others criticizing him. He quoted their statements but then chose to rely on Ibn Ḥajar’s verdict: “trustworthy, yet prone to error.” From that he inferred that Yunus is weak unless supported, ignoring the verdicts of the many leading authorities who declared him reliable, merely out of deference to Ibn Ḥajar.

What is astonishing is that, after citing Ibn ʿAdī’s remark, “the leading scholars declared him reliable…,” he then added, “See al-Mīzān, the introduction to Fatḥ al-Bārī, and al-ʿIbar….” So we looked, and at the close of Yunus’s entry in al-Mīzān we found al-Dhahabī saying, “His ḥadīth is ḥasan (sound)!” This is evidence against him, not for him; what, then, was the point of referring us to it?

In the Muqaddimah Ibn Ḥajar likewise says: “There is disagreement about him, and Abū Ḥātim said, ‘His standing is truthfulness.’” The same reasoning applies here: in the terminology of ḥadīth criticism, saying that a narrator is “disagreed upon” yet “his place is honesty” means his reports are ḥasan. This is further supported by the fact that Ibn Ḥajar remained silent about many of Yunus’s narrations—one that comes to mind is ʿĀʾishah’s report on eating qithṭāʾ (cucumbers) with fresh dates—for he did not object to it in Fatḥ al-Bārī.