Al-Mazini was born in Cairo, to a well-off family, but grew up in relative poverty after his father died while he was young.

Nonetheless, the school contributed greatly to his literary development, since in the years prior to the founding of the Egyptian University, the Teacher's College was one of the few accessible avenues for students with literary ambitions, and its students included a number who would become prominent in Egyptian literature, including Abd Al-Rahman Shukri, who became an important influence and associate of al-Mazini's.

[2] Graduating from the Teacher's College in 1909, al-Mazini taught first at the Khedivial School, and then at Dar al-Ulum, from which he resigned in 1914, after possibly having been reassigned (and assigned to teach a minor subject) due to one of his critiques offending Hishmat Pasha [ar], the Minister of Education.

[6] Despite the novel's positive reception, al-Mazini forsook novel-writing for political and narrative essay-writing from 1931 to 1943; some of his writings from this period were published in two collections, Khuyut al-Ankabut (Spider Webs, 1935) and Fi al-tariq (On the Road, 1937).

[1] The break in his novel-writing career may have been related to a plagiarism controversy, as Ibrahim al-Katib contained several pages from a Russian novel al-Mazini had previously translated.