Al-Bukhārī said in the Book of Medicine of his Ṣaḥīḥ (1): “Ḥusayn narrated to us; Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ narrated to us …,” and he went on to mention a ḥadith. Abū Naṣr al-Kalābādhī and al-Ḥākim commented, “That Ḥusayn is al-Qabbānī.” (2)
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbaydah said: “I heard al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad relate:
‘My grandfather Ziyād owned a qabbān (steelyard). He was not a professional wazzān (weigh-master), and at that time there was no large qabbān in Nīshāpūr. Whenever people wished to weigh something, they would borrow my grandfather’s steelyard, so he became known as al-Qabbānī. He had brought the qabbān with him from the land of Fārs to Nīshāpūr.’ (3)”
I say: Abū ʿAlī al-Qabbānī had heard the Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ directly from him and used to accompany al-Bukhārī throughout his stay in Nīshāpūr; this makes it more likely that he is the Ḥusayn in question. Others, however, maintain that it was Ḥusayn ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jaʿfar al-Bīkandī.
Among those who transmitted from him was Daʿlaj al-Sijzī.
(1) 10/115, “Chapter: Healing lies in three things.” The text reads: “Al-Husayn related to us; Ahmad ibn Mani‘ related to us; Marwan ibn Shuja‘ related to us; Salim al-Aftas from Sa‘id ibn Jubayr, from Ibn ‘Abbas: ‘Healing is in three things: a draught of honey, the incision of a cupping-glass, and cauterization with fire; but I forbid my community to practice cauterization.’ ” The report is transmitted as marfu‘ (attributed to the Prophet).
(2) Al-Hafiz comments: “Thus it appears in their copies without a lineage. Several scholars assert that the transmitter is al-Qabbani. Al-Kallabadhi states that he used to accompany al-Bukhari while the latter was in Nishapur and that he possessed a copy of the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Mani‘ which he had heard from him, without the intermediary who appears in this hadith. Al-Hakim reports in his Taʾrikh, through the same al-Husayn, that the latter once narrated a hadith and said, ‘Muhammad ibn Isma‘il (al-Bukhari) wrote this hadith from me, and I saw it in the notebook of one of the students who had heard it from me through him.’ Al-Hafiz adds: Al-Husayn al-Qabbani outlived al-Bukhari by thirty-three years and was a contemporary of Muslim; hence al-Bukhari’s narration from him counts as a senior scholar relating from a junior. Al-Hakim, according to what al-Hafiz reports in Fath al-Bari, decisively identifies the mentioned al-Husayn as Ibn Yahya ibn Ja‘far al-Baykandi. Al-Bukhari narrates abundantly from his father Yahya ibn Ja‘far, who is among his younger shaykhs, whereas al-Husayn was much younger than al-Bukhari. Al-Hafiz concludes: In Sahih al-Bukhari there is no other hadith narrated from al-Husayn—whether he be al-Qabbani or al-Baykandi—besides this one.
(3) See: Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, 2/681.