Ronald E. Emmerick’s Handbook of Khotanese consists of two parts: his Introduction to Khotanese, tried and tested with students over the years and here made available in print for the first time; and a systematic survey of Khotanese and the closely related Tumshuqese language. The Introduction, completed with additional chapters by the editors, offers a gradual and comprehensive introduction to Old Khotanese, with translation exercises. Late Khotanese is introduced in the final chapter of the course.

This book describes an endangered variety of Gorani spoken by an Ahl-i Haqq (Yaresan) community in a village of western Iran, Kermanshah province. It contains a grammatical sketch, transcribed and analysed texts that were recorded in the village, and a lexicon with all words occurring in the text. The book is accompanied by an audio CD with the recordings of all texts.

The nature of Old Khotanese metre has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. Nicholas Sims-Williams presents a new metrical analysis of the Book of Zambasta, the longest surviving Khotanese poem, arguing that the metre is based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. „Ehsan Yarshater Book Award for Pre-Islamic Iran“ of the Persian Heritage Foundation (2023).

Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit bildet die Untersuchung des Agrarsektors des sasanidischen Reiches, das vom 3. bis zur Mitte des 7. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. gen größten Teil Vorderasiens beherrscht hat. Dabei werden Fragen der Landnutzung und Agrarproduktion sowie der Stand der Anbauverhältnisse, der Anbaumethoden und der Gerätetechnik dieser Zeit im Rahmen einer Landwirtschaft analysiert, die unter den klimatischen und geographischen Bedingungen des Orients im Wesentlichen eine Bewässerungslandwirtschaft ist. Wassergewinnungsmethoden und Bewässerungseinrichtungen, hydraulische Technologie auf ihrer sasanidischen Stufe werden miteinbezogen.