A descendant of a Jewish family, possibly of Moroccan origin, Zaki Murâd began his life as a tissue merchant in Alexandria. He enrolled at the Arab Music Conservatory in 1907 and released a few recordings in 1910. Mentored by ̕Abd al-Hay Hilmî, he learned several adwar and a solid singing technique. He won great success with the public, multiplying records, repeating on the one
hand the Khedivial repertoire of adwar and qasa ‘id, and creating on the other light songs on stage. Tired by the instability in Egypt, he went on tour around 1928, crossing Tunisia, Algeria, France and finally the USA. He made fortunes that he squandered and returned broken in 1932. He then realized that the taste of the public had changed and his name was almost forgotten. He devoted himself to the artistic training of his children, the singer Layla Murâd and composer Munir Murâd, who since the 1930s found a glory equivalent to what their father had experienced between 1915 and 1920