Ammon News - The “world’s dirtiest man” has died in Iran aged 94, weeks after taking his first bath, Iran’s state-linked IRNA media outlet reported.

Amou Haji, or “uncle Haji”, refused to wash since his youth after suffering an emotional setback, leading him to have a fear of bathing, according to members of Dezgah village, in Iran's southern Fars province.

His story was first reported by the Tehran Times in 2014 and since then, he had resisted local efforts to convince him to wash, reportedly jumping out of a car when villagers tried to take him to a nearby river.

Haji, who had reportedly not bathed for more than seven decades, was homeless and lived in the desert near the village, sleeping in a brick shack built for him by sympathetic neighbours.

A heavy smoker, his diet reportedly consisted of rotting porcupine meat — one of several unlikely rumours about his life, in addition to a story that he drank water from a rusty oil can — perhaps a more likely cause of his demise than taking a bath.

He was buried in Farashband City in Fars on Tuesday.