Sabbas, a monk from Cappadocia who had trained in the monastic communities of the Judean Desert, founded the community that bears his name, Mar Saba, "Saint Sabbas" in Aramaic and Arabic, around 483 CE, building it as a laura, a monastic pattern distinct from fully communal cenobitic monasticism in which monks lived individually in caves and cells scattered across the cliff face during the week, gathering only for communal worship at a central church on weekends.
The site's steep terrain, overlooking the Kidron Valley on its way toward the Dead Sea, was already associated with earlier Judean Desert hermits before Sabbas arrived, and the monastery he founded became the most influential of the region's laurae, drawing recruits from across the Byzantine world and shaping desert monasticism as it spread further. Sabbas is credited with compiling a liturgical rule, the Sabaite Typikon, that came to govern the order of services across much of Byzantine and later Orthodox monasticism, making Mar Saba's influence considerably larger than its remote location and small resident population would suggest; elements of the Sabaite liturgical tradition remain in use in Orthodox churches today, well beyond the monastery's own walls.