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Ichthyophagi

Ichthyophagi ( Gr. Ἰχθυοφάγοι and Latin Ichthyophagi, for "Fish-Eaters"), the name given by ancient geographers to several coast-dwelling peoples in different parts of the world and ethnically unrelated.

  • Herodotus (book i. c. 200) mentions three tribes of the Babylonians who were solely fish-eaters, and in book iii. c. 19 refers to Ichthyophagi in Aethiopia. Diodorus Siculus and Strabo also referred to them all along the African coast of the Red Sea in their descriptions of Aethiopia.
  • Ptolemy speaks of fish-eaters in the Persian Gulf coasts, coast of the Red Sea, on the west coast of Africa and on the coast of the Far East near the harbour of Cattigara
  • Pliny relates the existence of such people on the islands in the Persian Gulf
  • Nearchus mentions such a race as inhabiting the barren shores of the Gwadar and Pasni districts in Makrān, Balochistan, Pakistan. During the homeward march of Alexander the Great, his admiral, Nearchus led a fleet in Arabian Sea along the Makrān coast and recorded that the area was dry and mountainous, inhabited by the Ichthyophagoi or Fish-Eaters .
  • Pausanias locates them on the western (African) coast of the Red Sea

The existence of such tribes was confirmed by Sir Richard F Burton (El-Medinah, p. 144).

Usage examples of "ichthyophagi".

The fleet followed the coast from the Indus along the banks of the country of the Oritæ, of the Ichthyophagi, of Carmania, and Persia.