Approaches of literary composition in the third Hijri century

This research highlights two main approaches that are used in the most distinguished literary books in the Hijri third century: The first one is digression. This approach is based on the spontaneous transferring of the readers from a subject or ideato another without a logical connection. This approach may include a hint of confusion and a lack of methodicalness. It may also hide denotations, intentions and viewpoints that could not be made explicit. Al-Jahez (255 Hijri) is the most prominent representative of the approach in his two books (Al-Hayawan) and (Al-Bayan and Altabyeen), Al-Jahez is truly considered the real founder of digression. The second one is the approach of categorization and classification that is based on arranging the cognitive, homogeneous vocabulary and putting them within one chapter with a specific title. In his book (Uyoun Al-akhbar), Ibn Qutaibah is considered the first to begin this method by dividing his book into categories. Each of these categories include a set of partly homogeneous news. This is because he does not want to completely break away from the tradition of digression used by his predecessors. Ibn Qutaibah's work was a leading stage in the field of categorizing and classification. As for the book (Al–Kamel) by Al–Mubarred; in spite of dividing this book to chapters, it does not hold the essence of categorization, and the division was just formal.