Ubayd was from the Zakani family, which was descended from the Banu Khafaja, an Arab tribe that had immigrated to Qazvin in northern Iran at the start of the Islamic era.

[1] The Zakani family was made up of two branches; one being notable for its field in religion, while the other, to which Ubayd belonged, consisted of landowners and bureaucrats.

There he joined the court of the Injuid ruler Abu Ishaq Inju (r. 1343–1357), to whom he wrote a considerable segment of his panegyrics, and also his acclaimed Ushshaq-nama (1350), a masnavi mixed with ghazals.

[1] Ubayd was part of Abu Ishaq Inju's circle of poets, which included an elder Khwaju Kermani and a young Hafez.

[1][7] He later returned to Shiraz during the reign of Mubariz al-Din Muhammad's son and successor Shah Shoja Mozaffari (r. 1358–1384), to whom he dedicated several panegyrics.

[3] According to the British orientalist Edward Granville Browne, Ubayd was "perhaps the most remarkable parodist and satirical writer produced by Persia.