Al-Khalidi was a Sunni Muslim native of Safad. He received his religious education at al-Azhar in Cairo and afterward became the mufti of the Hanafi fiqh (school of Islamic jurisprudence) of his hometown. The Hanafi fiqh was the school of Ottoman officialdom. After the appointment of Fakhr al-Din, a Druze chieftain from Mount Lebanon and the sanjak-bey (district governor) of Sidon-Beirut, to the governorship of Safad in 1602, al-Khalidi became his adviser.