a group of Successors, and the people of Medina narrated from him. He died in 156 AH at the age of eighty-five.” (1)

This contradicts everything that has preceded, for it names Anas as Yunus’s more remote grandfather, whereas he is his immediate grandfather—the reverse of what appears in al-Isabah. This discrepancy in Yunus’s lineage indicates only that he was not well-known. Yet Ibn Hibban proceeded on the basis of these discrepancies and made them into three biographical entries, though they concern a single narrator. Al-Haythami likewise listed them in Tartib al-Thiqat in the same manner. Allah knows best.

In sum, the chain of transmission of this hadith is weak because some of its narrators are unknown. Al-Haythami, however, said in Majma al-Zawa'id: “Al-Tabarani narrated it, and among its narrators is Ya'qub ibn Muhammad al-Zuhri, whom Ibn Hibban and others declared reliable, while a group declared him weak; the rest of its narrators are reliable.”

Similar is what Muhammad ibn Ishaq narrated from Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Amr ibn Hazm, from his father, from his grandfather, who said: “I used Abu al-Qasim as my kunya. I went to my maternal uncles from Banu Sa'idah, and they heard me using it. They forbade me and said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: Whoever takes my name must not use my kunya.’ So I changed my kunya and adopted Abu Abd al-Malik.”