Maimonides here and elsewhere echoes Avicenna's idea of God as “necessary being”—literally, “The Necessary of Existence” (wājib al-wujūd)—whose essential nature it is to exist, and who, as such, does not rely on another for His existence. Maimonides' God is, to use the language of Avicenna, the proven existent which “when it is considered in itself, has its existence by necessity” and which, as such, has no cause (HM, H 241).