	Abd al-Aziz was the son of a senior member of the Umayyad clan, Marwan ibn al-Hakam, and one of the latter's wives, Layla bint Zabban ibn al-Asbagh of the Banu Kalb tribe. He may have visited Egypt when the province was governed by Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari (667–682), the appointee of Mu'awiya I, founder of the Umayyad Caliphate. In 682, Abd al-Aziz was part of an embassy alongside his elder half-brother Abd al-Malik sent by Marwan to the anti-Umayyad rebel Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca. When the inhabitants of Medina, the home of much of the Umayyad clan, rebelled against Mu'awiya's successor, Caliph Yazid I (), and besieged the Umayyad family in Marwan's neighborhood in 683, Abd al-Aziz is not mentioned as being present. The historian Wilhelm Barthold speculates he could have been in Egypt at the time.