His family originated from Wasit in Iraq, from where his parents had emigrated to the Hadramawt region in the east of Yemen – where the Husaynī tribe is situated.
Murtaḍá earned his nisba 'al-Zabīdī' from Zabīd in the south western coastal plains of Yemen, which was a centre of academic learning where he had spent time studying.
Rulers from Hejaz, India, Yemen, Levant, Iraq, Morocco, Turkey, Sudan and Algiers corresponded with him; people sent him presents and gifts from everywhere.
None after Ibn al-Ĥajar al-Ásqalāni and his students can match Az-Zabīdī in terms of his encyclopaedic knowledge of (Prophetic) traditions and its associated sciences; nor in fame or list of students.”[11] Zabidi's immense proficiency of diverse sciences and his thriving trade with books as well as with his own writings was described with commendation by one of his Maghribi visitors, Ibn 'Abdal al-Salam al-Nasiri:[12] He was master of [Collections of] hadith, tafsir, Arabic lexigraphy and other diverse sciences, unequalled by any of those scholars whom we met in the East or West [...] You find him continuously buying and copying against payment, borrowing books from remote regions, other books being sent to him as presents.
(Even) if those came together with him, they would surely admit that superiority is not with the first ones (al-Fadila lam tankin li'l-uwal).As a polymath and prolific writer, his works cover a range of topics:[11]