Farzat was born and raised in the city of Hama, in central Syria on 22 June 1951. At the age of 12 he started publishing drawings professionally on the front pages of al-Ayyam newspaper, shortly before it was banned by the ruling Baath Party. In 1969 he began drawing caricatures for the state-run daily, al-Thawra. He enrolled at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 1970, and left before graduating in 1973. In the mid-1970s he moved to another government controlled daily, Tishreen, where his cartoons appeared every day. International recognition followed in 1980 when he won the first prize at the Intergraphic International Festival in Berlin, Germany, and his drawings began to appear in the French newspaper Le Monde. His exhibition in 1989 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France led to a death threat from Saddam Hussein, and a ban from Iraq, Jordan and Libya. The drawing that brought about the most controversy was called The General and the Decorations which showed a general handing out military decorations instead of food to a hungry Arab citizen.

Farzat met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad prior to his presidency in 1996. According to Farzat, “He [Bashar] actually laughed at some of the cartoons—specifically at those targeting security personnel—he had a bunch of them with him and he turned to them and said: ‘Hey, he is making fun of you. What do you think?” Afterward the two developed a friendship. In December 2000 Farzat started publishing al-Domari (“The Lamplighter”), which was the first independent periodical in Syria since the Baath Party came to power in 1963. The newspaper was based on political satire and styled in a similar way to the French weekly Le Canard enchaîné. The first issue of the paper came out in February 2001 and the entire 50,000 copies were sold in less than four hours. In 2002, he won the prestigious Dutch Prince Claus Award for “achievement in culture and development”. By 2003, however, frequent government censorship and lack of funds forced Farzat to close down al-Domari. He has been called “one of the most famous cultural figures in the Arab world”. In December 2012, Farzat was awarded Gebran Tueni prize in Lebanon.

On 25 August 2011, Farzat was reportedly pulled from his vehicle in Umayyad Square in central Damascus by masked gunmen believed to be part of the security forces and a pro-government militia. The men assaulted him, focusing mainly on his hands, and dumped him on the side of the airport road where passersby found him and took him to a hospital. According to one of his relatives, the security forces notably targeted his hands with both being broken and then told Farzat it was “just a warning.” His brother As’aad, however, claims Farzat was kidnapped from his home around 5am by five gunmen and then taken to the airport road after being beaten “savagely.” The gunmen then warned him “not to satirize Syria’s leaders.” The Local Coordination Committee (LCC), an activist group representing the rebellion in Syria, stated that his briefcase and the drawings in them were confiscated by the assailants.