When he relaxed from his labours in the presence of his friends, it was to play and laugh like an innocent child, more especially if children were present to play and laugh with him." His labours were the incessant charge of the English, travelling often great distances to baptize, marry, or bury, together with constant teaching in the schools he had established both for the English and natives, attendance on the sick in the hospitals, and likewise private arguments with Mahometans and Hindoos.

Public preachings in the streets and bazaars, like those of Swartz, Carey, and Ward, he does not seem to have attempted at this time; but his translations were his great and serious employment, and one that gave him much delight.

His thorough classical education and scholarship fitted him for this in an unusual degree, and besides the Hindostanee version of the Prayer-book, the Persian--so much wanted in the Bombay Presidency--was committed to him; and an assistant was sent to him, whose history, disappointing as it is, cannot be omitted from the account of Indian missions.
Sabat was an Arab of the tribe of Koreish, the same which gave birth to Mahomet himself.

He was born on the banks of the Euphrates, and educated in such learning as still lingered about the city of the Khalifs; but he left home early, and served in the Turkish army against the French at Acre.

Afterwards he became a soldier in the Persian army, where he was several times wounded, and in consequence retired, and, wandering into Cabul, there rose to be a royal secretary.
He formed a close friendship with his colleague, Abdallah, likewise a Koreishite Arab, and very able and poetical.