Abū ʿAlqama, a man described in the extant sources as an individual who was alive at some point in the 1st/7th and 2nd/8th centuries; however, judging from these sources, he would seem to be a legendary figure. Several tales are recounted about him, all in a similar vein: they portray him as someone whose speech comprised incomprehensible and bizarre terms, which he had apparently discovered in this or that corner of the vast vocabulary of the Arabic language, so that his audience could never com…