 Ibn al-‘Arabî calls the word shay’, thing, “one of the most indefinite of the indefinites” (min ankar al-nakirât), because it can refer to anything whatsoever, existent or nonexistent, real or unreal. Nonetheless, he tells us that he avoids using it in reference to God because God does not use it to name himself. He does call God an entity, however, especially in the phrase “the One Entity” (al-‘ayn al-wâhida), typically in contexts that bring to mind what the later tradition sometimes called the doctrine of the Oneness of Being. For example: