Muhammad Wahid was born on 21 September 1878, to a middle class Bengali Muslim family in the Moulvi Bari of the Hawapara neighbourhood of Sylhet, which was then under the North-East Frontier in British India.

[9] After completing his education, Wahid became a teacher at the Sylhet Government High School and among his students were Abdul Hamid and Basanta Kumar Das.

[2] Wahid later abandoned his legal studies and became the professor of Arabic and Persian at the Cotton College in Gauhati, Assam.

[11] On his return to the subcontinent, Wahid also visited Darul Uloom Deoband and the Islamic seminaries of Rampur and Lucknow.

After consulting numerous ulama across the world, he formulated the reformed New Scheme madrasa system as the head of the Mohammedan Education Advisory Committee in 1914.

[15] After its establishment in 1921, Wahid additionally served as a professor and the inaugural Head and founder of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the university.

At his initiative in 1935, the Sylhet Government Alia Madrasah became the first madrasa in Bengal to receive kamil status.

[17] Wahid was also known to have brought to light a Shah Jalal Dargah inscription kept in the house of Sheikh Abdul Haq, his sister's father-in-law, in Ambarkhana, Sylhet.

[citation needed] Abu Nasr Wahid wrote many books in Arabic and Bengali, and was also fluent in English, Persian and Urdu.

He wrote books on Arabic literature such as Barakat al-Adab and Mirqah al-Adab (for beginners),[20] and other books such as Khutbah an-Nabi, Salsil Qiraat, Nukhab (selected stories from Kalīla wa-Dimna, One Thousand and One Nights and Brethren of Purity),[21] Nukhab al-Ulum and Madarij al-Qiraat.