Masawaih al-Mardini was an Arabian physician. He was born in Mardin

Mardin

Mardin is a city in southeastern Turkey. The capital of Mardin Province, it is known for its Arabic-like architecture, and for its strategic location on a rocky mountain overlooking the plains of northern Syria.-History:...

, Upper Mesopotamia. After working in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

, he entered to the service of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah

Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah

Abu ‘Ali Mansur Tāriqu l-Ḥākim, called Al-Hakim bi Amr al-Lāh , was the sixth Fatimid caliph and 16th Ismaili imam .- History :...

. He died in 1015 in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 at the age of ninety.

Masawaih al-Mardini was a Nestorian Christian. He is known due to its books on purgatives and emetics (De medicins laxativis) and on the complete pharmacopoeia in 12 parts called the Antidotarium sive Grabadin medicamentorum, which remained for centuries the standard text-book of pharmacy in the West.

He also described methods of distillation of empyreumatic oils. A method of extracting oil from "some kind of bituminous shale", one of the first descriptions of extraction of shale oil

Shale oil

Shale oil, known also as kerogen oil or oil-shale oil, is an unconventional oil produced from oil shale by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution. These processes convert the organic matter within the rock into synthetic oil and gas...

was described by him in the 10th century.