Machine summary:
What light, if any, do their mathematics and their decorative art throw on their intellectual and emotional attitude towards the concepts of space and time ?
Again, our ignorance of the concepts of Muslim science sometimes leads to erroneous views of modern culture.
Moreover it is likely that this small manuscript of great value may lead to the opening up of a fresh field of inquiry about the origins of our concepts of space and time, the importance of which has only recently been realised by modern Physics.
'Iraqi, however, was not a mathematician, though his view of space and time appears to me to be several centuries ahead of Tusi.
From this summary of 'Iraqi's view you will see how a cultured Muslim Sufi intellectually interpreted his spiritual experience of time and space in an age which had no idea of the theories and concepts of modern mathematics and physics.
In modern times it was Kant who first definitely suggested the idea of different spaces as you will see from the following passage which I quote from his Prolegomena : .
'Iraqi's mind seems to be vaguely struggling with the concept of space as an infinite continuum ; yet he was unable to see I, the full implications of his thought partly because he was I not a mathematician and partly because of his natural prejudice in favour of the traditional Aristotelian idea of a fixed Universe.