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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Forty-Three: What is Time? Discussion about the Reality of Time Strange positions have also been reported regarding the reality of time, to which Ibn Sīnā has referred in the Physics of his Shifā .

However, it seems that the solution of the problem of time was easier for Muslim philosophers than the problem of space, for they are almost entirely in agreement that time is a kind of continuous quantity characterized by instability and which by means of motion becomes an accident of bodies. In this way, the position of time in the Aristotelian table of categories becomes perfectly clear.

Ṣadr al-Muta’allihīn has also presented this explanation in numerous places, but in the final analysis of the problem of motion, he states a new view which is especially important. No matter how clear the explanation of time given by the philosophers is, if one is precise about it one will encounter ambiguous and questionable points which require deep thought.

Perhaps it is these which attracted the fine and insightful attention of Ṣadr al-Muta’allihīn, and led him to present a new theory of time. In order to explain these points something must be mentioned about the principles of the philosophers related to this question, even though this is not really the place to discuss and research them. Philosophers normally introduce motion as an ‘accident,’ but do not explain this any further.

Only some of them have regarded it as of the category of ‘that which acts’ or ‘that which is acted upon.’ Shaykh al-Ishrāq considered it to be an independent category alongside substance, quantity, quality and relation. In this way, he limited the number of categories to five, and he considered the others as types of relation. Perhaps one may infer from the words of other philosophers that they have not considered motion itself to be among the categories.

Another principle is that motion is confined to four categories (quantity, quality, position, and place), and they consider transferal to be a motion in the category of place. They imagined that motion in the other categories, including substance, was impossible. Therefore, motion, considered to be an intermediary between bodies and time, was inevitably taken to be motion in one of the four categories of accidents.