Unknown hysteresis characteristics can seriously affect control accuracy, resulting in system oscillation and instability. This study explored a dynamic surface control (DSC) method according to disturbance observer for a type of uncertain nonlinear system with unknown Prandtl-Ishlinskii hysteresis. First, DSC is adopted for the trajectory tracking control, which solves the “differential explosion” in the traditional backstepping control scheme and simplifies the structure of the controller. Then, an observer is introduced to monitor the hysteresis, effectively suppressing the effect of the hysteresis features on the system and achieving accurate tracking of the system. The scheme proposed in this study is confirmed to be effective based on the simulation results.