Some "orientalists" (or those particularly influenced by Thomist scholarship) argued that Avicenna was the first to view existence ("wujud") as an accident that happens to the essence ("mahiyya"). However, this aspect of ontology is not the most central to the distinction that Avicenna established between essence and existence. One cannot therefore make the claim that Avicenna was the proponent of the concept of essentialism "per se", given that existence ("al-wujud") when thought of in terms of necessity would ontologically translate into a notion of the "Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself" ("wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi"), which is without description or definition, and particularly without quiddity or essence ("la mahiyya lahu"). Consequently, Avicenna's ontology is 'existentialist' when accounting for being qua existence in terms of necessity ("wujub"), while it is 'essentialist' in terms of thinking about being qua existence ("wujud") in terms of contingency qua possibility ("imkan"; or "mumkin al-wujud": contingent being).