This paper explores the relationship between image and text in Islamic manuscripts from the 13th-15th centuries, particularly commentaries written by the director of the Samarqand observatory Qāḍīzāde al-Rūmī, and one of Qāḍīzāde’s prominent students Fatḥallāh al-Shirwānī. Using examples of how these commentators portrayed the components and motions of complex models, as well as more basic celestial phenomena, it describes how students could begin to put together an impression of how they combined to produce the apparently irregular motions we observe in the heavens, as well as the outstanding problems of Ptolemaic planetary theory that these astronomers were attempting to explain and resolve. This paper analyzes the extent to which images may have helped the reader visualize different kinds of motion and extrapolate from two-dimensional static “mathematical” images to the three-dimensional dynamic “physical” motions of the heavens. This paper suggests that differences in the kinds of images each commentator chose to add to their texts, the manner in which they portrayed the models and particular motions, and the ways in which they highlighted and analyzed different issues reflect differences in the intended audiences for the two commentaries.