Time and Place in the View of Mirza Khalil Khan Thaqafi (A lam al-awlah): Two Hand-Written Treatises

Doctor Khalil Khan Thaqafi (A‘lam al-Dawlah), a physician, writer, and translator of the Qajar period and one of the first graduates of modern medicine in Iran, translated and wrote two treatises about time and place after he graduated from Dar al-Funun and before he went abroad. In the treatise that he wrote himself, Mirza Khalil Khan discusses the quality of the development of the idea of space, the distinction between the idea of environmental space and infinite space, the quality of the formation of the idea of infinite space, the idea of space as substance, the infinity of space with respect to its breadth and continuity, the development of the idea of time, and the idea of time as a predicate of space. In this treatise, he briefly explains and criticizes the ideas of such philosophers as Victor Cousin, Stewart Mill, and Spinoza. In the second treatise, which is a translation, he discusses whether time and place are substance or not.