Was Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in the habit of evaluating hadith by reason before authenticating it, or did he follow the methodology of Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah? And was he among those who are lenient in authentication?

It is not known from Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar or other Sunni memorizers of hadith that they stipulated the presentation of a hadith to the intellect for its authentication. Rather, Ibn Abd al-Barr considered anyone who rejected an authentic hadith without a legitimate Shar'i reason to have lost his integrity. The intellect that some wish to make a judge over narrations differs greatly, as what one intellect accepts, another may reject. Intellectual knowledge does not pertain to matters of the unseen (Ghaib) and legislation (Tashree'), which are the subjects of hadith. Nevertheless, the hadith scholars established rules for identifying fabricated hadith, among them its contradiction to the intellect in an uninterpretable manner, or its contradiction to sensory perception and observation, such as a report whose occurrence is impossible. Therefore, a contradiction between intellect and narration only occurs due to a defect in the intellect or a weakness in the narration. As for the issue of Ibn Hajar's leniency in authentication, it is a relative matter and is considered leniency compared to the strict scholars, and most later scholars shared this characteristic with him.