He was born in 108 AH, according to Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; al-Fallās, however, placed his birth in 110 AH.
He narrated hadith from Ayyūb, Ḥumayd, Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd, al-Ḥaddhāʾ, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, Isḥāq ibn Suwayd, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān ibn Khuthaym, Abū Hārūn al-ʿAbdī, Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad, Hishām ibn Ḥassān, Mālik ibn Dīnār, al-Jurayrī, ʿAwf, and many others.
Those who transmitted from him include Aḥmad, Isḥāq, Yaḥyā, ʿAlī, al-Fallās, Bundār, Qutaybah, Ibn al-Muthannā, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-ʿAdanī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Rusta, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Zimmānī, Yaḥyā ibn Ḥakīm, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, and a host of others.
Al-Ḥārith al-Naqqāl reported from Ibn Mahdī: “Four men share the same rank in hadith: Jarīr, Muʿtamir, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Thaqafī, and ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Sāmī. They would read from other people’s written collections yet retained them with perfect accuracy.” (1)
Ibn Maʿīn said, “He is reliable, but confusion affected him toward the end of his life.” (2)
ʿUqbah ibn Mukram al-ʿAmmī stated, “ʿAbd al-Wahhāb became confused three or four years before he died.”
Al-Fasawī related that ʿAlī observed: “There is no book on Yaḥyā’s authority anywhere in the world more sound than the book of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb; every other compilation from Yaḥyā is a burden beside it”—that is, the book authored by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.