Shah Abd al-Wahhab was born in 1894 into a Bengali Muslim zamindar family in the village of Ruhullahpur, Hathazari, in the Chittagong District of the Bengal Presidency.
Shah Abd al-Wahhab's ancestor, Shaykh Nasir ad-Din, is said to have migrated from Persia to the island of Sandwip in the Bay of Bengal.
His great-grandfather, Shaykh Asʿad Ali, then moved from Sandwip to the village of Ruhullahpur in Hathazari, Chittagong District, where the family eventually settled.
After completing his primary education in the Qur'an and Persian language, his parents enrolled him at Darul Uloom Hathazari in 1904 under the supervision of Habibullah Qurayshi.
[7] After completing his education at Deoband, Shah Abd al-Wahhab joined the Khanqah-i-Imdadiyah in Thana Bhawan to become a disciple of the Ashraf Ali Thanwi, which was also the wish of his teacher in Hathazari, Habibullah Qurayshi.
Shah Abd al-Wahhab then left Thana Bhawan after being granted the title of Junayd-e-Waqt and was appointed as the leader of Muslims in Bengal, Assam, and Burma.
The news of his 18-day grant of successorship from Thanwi reached Bengal, and upon his arrival at the Port of Chittagong, a large public reception was organized by locals.
Later, a vice-principal position was required due to the expansion of the institution's activities, and with the advice of Zamiruddin Ahmad, Abd al-Wahhab was appointed in 1930.
[13] In 1934, Abd al-Wahhab started the Islam Prachar, a monthly magazine with Abul Farah as the chief editor.
To address this deficiency, Abd al-Wahhab founded the Ashrafia Library in 1954, named after his mentor Ashraf Ali Thanwi.
[15] This non-profit library provided books from Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries at low cost.
[15] During the Hathazari turmoil in 1941, the British government closed the madrasa, locking up the office and classrooms and filing a case against the institution.
[16] In this crisis, Abd al-Wahhab sold a significant portion of his property (which is currently worth hundreds of crores of rupees) to handle the case.
On one occasion, Abd al-Wahhab fell ill and was taken to Chittagong General Hospital for treatment by Muhammad Ibrahim.
Shah Abd al-Wahhab first introduced a weekly tafsir gathering at Anderkilla Shahi Jame Mosque.
[19] After the first Shaykhul Hadith Saeed Ahmad Sandwipi left Hathazari, a kind of emptiness prevailed in the institution as there was no one qualified to take his place.
For this reason, Shah Abd al-Wahhab travelled to India in 1942–43 and managed to bring Ibrahim Baliyavi, the senior muhaddith of Darul Uloom Deoband, to come to Hathazari with a monthly wage of 500 takas.
Abd al-Wahhab was the main inspiration behind Tanzeem al-Ashtat, an explanation of Mishkat al-Masabih by Abul Hasan Babunagari.
His poetic practice was mainly focused on ethics and based upon Ta‘alluq Ma‘ Allah (Relationship between the Creator and creation).
Following the Partition of Bengal in 1947, Shah Abd al-Wahhab toured the Muslim world visiting places such as Myanmar, Egypt and countries in Africa.
[25] In 1956, under Shah Abd al-Wahhab's initiative, Shamsul Haque Faridpuri founded the Jamia Arabia Imdadul Uloom Faridabad madrasa in Dhaka.
[25] Also, under his encouragement and guidance, many more madrasahs, maktabs, mosques and khanqahs were established in remote areas of the country's divisional towns.