Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi
According to historians of pharmacy, mummia became part of the materia medica of the Arabs, discussed by Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (845–925) and Ibn al-Baitar (1197–1248). Medieval Persian physicians used bitumen/asphalt both as a salve for cuts, bruises, and bone fractures, and as an internal medicine for stomach ulcers and tuberculosis. They achieved the best results with a black pissasphalt that seeped from a mountain in Darabgerd, Persia. The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides' c. 50–70 "De Materia Medica" ranked bitumen from the Dead Sea as medicinally superior to the pissasphalt from Apollonia (Illyria), both of which were considered to be an equivalent substitute for the scarce and expensive Persian "mumiya".