Born in Balkh in Khorasan, there are no works that date his birth, but some have estimated his birth year to be around 80 H. He spent his early life in both Balkh and Marw. In Balkh, he was impacted by the religious diversity it had in the pre-islamic era. He later migrated to Marw in order to get married. During the caliphate of Marwan II, Muqatil was involved in the civil war between the Abbasids and Umayyads. With the end of Umayyad rule he migrated to Iraq, settling in Basra and then moving to Baghdad. Due to possible Zaydi influence, he preferred the Abbasids to the previous Umayyad government, and some sources indicate that he would frequent the Abbasid court. Once, when visiting the Caliph al-Mansur, a fly sat on his face. Muqatil remarked that God had created the fly to humble the tyrants.