“Like a niche”—that is, a recess in a wall with no opening; if it has an opening, it is a window. It is also said that mishkāh is an Ethiopian word. Mujahid said: It is a lamp (1). “In it is a lamp”—that is, a lantern; its root is connected with light, as is the word for morning. The meaning is: like a lamp within a niche. “The lamp is in a glass”—that is, the lantern. Al-Zajjaj said: The glass is mentioned because the light and brightness of the fire are more clearly seen in it than in anything else, and its radiance increases in glass.
He then described the glass, saying: “The glass is as though it were a shining star.” Abu Amr and al-Kisa'i recited it as dirri'in, with the letter dal vowelled with i and with a hamzah; while Hamzah and Abu Bakr recited it with the dal vowelled with u and with a hamzah. According to the reading with i on the dal, it is an intensive adjective derived from darʾ, meaning repelling, because the star repels devils from the heaven. It is compared to it in the state of being cast forth, because at that time it is brighter and more radiant. It is also said to derive from the expression used when a star darts forth while contracting, causing its light to intensify at that moment.
It is also said that durriyy means rising: one says that a star has risen when it appears and ascends. Likewise, one says that a person has appeared before us when he emerges and becomes visible. As for the reading with u on the dal and a hamzah, as recited by Hamzah, most grammarians held it to be linguistically irregular, since Arabic has no morphological pattern of this kind, with u on the first consonant and i on the second.
Abu Ubaydah said: I consider it to have a valid basis: it was originally durruʾ, on the pattern of fuʿʿul, derived from the verb meaning “I repelled,” like subbuh and quddus. They found the repeated u-vowels heavy, so they changed some of them to i, just as they said ʿitiyyan, though it is on the pattern of fuʿul, derived from the verb meaning “I rebelled.” The other reciters read durriyy, with u on the dal and a doubled ya without a hamzah, meaning intensely luminous. It is likened to a pearl because of its purity and beauty. Although a star is brighter than a pearl, it surpasses the other stars in radiance just as a pearl surpasses all other gems.
It is also said that the shining star is one of the five great planets: Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. It is also said that it was likened to a star rather than to the sun or the moon because the sun and moon are subject to eclipses, whereas the stars are not subject to eclipses.
“With its light kindled”: Abu Ja'far, Ibn Kathir, Abu Amr, and Yaqub recited tawaqqada, with an initial ta, a fatḥah on the ta, waw, and dal, and a doubled qaf, as a past-tense verb referring to the lamp—that is, it burned brightly. One says that a fire tawaqqadat when it has become ablaze. And