TEHRAN — Amou Haji, an Iranian man dubbed the “dirtiest man in the world”, has died at the age of 94 in the village of Dejgah, in the southern province of Fars.

He was so called because he had not washed for almost 70 years and he believed that staying dirty kept him alive for so long.

Haji lived in isolation in an open brick hut and had faced some “emotional setbacks in his youth.”

According to Iranian news agency IRNA, years of not bathing left him with skin covered in “soot and pus”.

In a 2014 interview given to the Tehran Times, he shared he mainly ate dead animals and particularly liked porcupine meat.

He drank 1.5 gallons of water a day, cut his hair by burning it over a fire, and smoked countless cigarettes gifted to him by villagers — as well as a pipe filled with dried animal feces as tobacco.

Attempts to bathe him or provide him with clean water made him sad, but villagers did persuade Haji to take a bath a few months ago.

Having finally succumbed to pressure and washed, Haji became ill shortly afterwards and died at the age of 94. — Euronews