Gedrosia

Map of the Empire burnt with division in satrapies (ca. 500 a.C.)

Gedrosia was located east of Carmania, and south of Aracosia and Drangiana.

Gedrosia (Greek Γεδρωσία) is the name of a historical region of Central Asia. Its limits in classical times were the Indus River, to the east, and the Makran desert, to the west, and it was washed to the south by the Indian Ocean. At present the area is called Balochistan and for the most part belongs politically to Pakistan.

This is a dry and mountainous region, inhabited since the Bronze Age by populations settled in the few oases scattered throughout the territory. The scarcity of resources forced its inhabitants to seek sustenance in the sea, for which the Greeks came to call them ichthyophages (fish eaters), a name whose Persian equivalent (Mahi khoran) can be seen reflected in the place name Makran.

The country was conquered by Cyrus II, the first Achaemenid king. Gedrosia was from then on part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, being one of its easternmost satrapies, bounded on the west by Carmania, on the north by Aracosia and Drangiana, and on the east by the scattered Indian states existing before Asoka's unification. Its capital was the royal city of Pura, identified with present-day Bampur. Herodotus later mentions the ichthyophages as spies used by Cambyses II, son of Cyrus II, against the Ethiopian macrobes and intermediaries of Cambyses before his king.

During the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great, Gedrosia was subdued, after the Macedonian retreat from the Indus Valley, by the land contingent commanded by Alexander himself, who suffered considerable losses when crossing this inhospitable region before reaching arrive at Carmania, en route to Susa.