Muhammad Murad Bakhsh was born on 9 October 1624, at the Rohtasgarh Fort in Bihar, as the sixth and youngest surviving son of Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

[citation needed] In 1638, Murad Bakhsh, at the age of fourteen years, married the Safavid princess, Sakina Banu Begum, daughter of Shah Nawaz Khan Safavi.

[5] On 30 November 1657, he proclaimed himself emperor at Ahmedabad, after reports that his father was ill. During the same year, he received the Ottoman ambassador Manzada Husain Agha, who arrived in the port of Surat and was on his way to meet Shah Jahan in Agra.

[6] Murad Bakhsh joined hands with Aurangzeb to defeat Dara Shikhoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan.

[citation needed] On 7 July 1658, while he was in a tent with his brother Aurangzeb, he was intoxicated, secretly sent to the prison and transferred to Gwalior Fort from January 1659.