I say: In fact, he did not begin listening to ḥadīth until he was a little over twenty years old; had he started while still a boy, he would have reached the rank of Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim and his peers.
Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb remarked: “He was reliable. He came to Baghdad and narrated there.”
Aḥmad ibn Kāmil said: “Wahb used to dye his hair with henna, and he died in Wāsiṭ in the year 239 AH.” Bahshal, Muṭayyin, and al-Baghawī all dated his death to that same year.
A sample of his higher-level isnāds:
• Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq informed us; al-Fath ibn ʿAbd al-Salām informed us; Abū al-Faḍl al-Urmawī, Abū Ghālib ibn al-Dāyah, and Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭarāʾifī likewise informed us (ḥ).
• Yaḥyā ibn Manṣūr the jurist, in his written transmission, informed us; ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad in Baghdad informed us in 607 AH—he died that same year; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad informed us; ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad in Damascus informed us in 603 AH; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Khayrūn also informed us, adding: Ibn al-Ṣayrafī the jurist narrated to us from him, who said:
• Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, and Abū Ghālib ibn al-Bannāʾ likewise informed us (ḥ).
• Al-Fakhr ibn al-Bukhārī also informed us; Niʿmah bint ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī informed us; my grandfather informed us (ḥ).
• Musallam ibn Muḥammad al-Qaysī and Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī the jurist informed us, saying: Dāwūd ibn Aḥmad al-Wakīl informed us (ḥ).
• Abū al-Marhaf al-Miqdād ibn Abī al-Qāsim al-Ṣiqillī informed us; Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn al-Razzāz informed us, saying: Abū al-Faḍl al-Urmawī informed us (ḥ).
• Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Zayn and Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī informed us, saying: al-Fath related to us from his three teachers—seven authorities in all—who said:
Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Muslima informed us; ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān informed us; Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Firyābī informed us in 298 AH; Wahb ibn Baqiyyah narrated to us; Isḥāq ibn Yūsuf informed us, from Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, from al-Shaʿbī, from Ziyād ibn Ḥudayr, who said: “ʿUmar said—”