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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for our opinion of <'Ijliyah> as an early 11th century Arabic woman's name appropriate to al-Andalus, and for suggestions on bynames appropriate to your persona. Here is what we have found.
We believe that <'Ijliyah> is indeed an appropriate name for this culture. It is recorded before your period [1], and to the best of our knowledge, most Arabic given names were used fairly uniformly throughout the Islamic world in our period. The name is pronounced roughly \'ij-LEE-yah\. The apostrophe indicates that the first sound of the name is pronounced with a constriction of the upper throat. The capitalized syllable is held a bit longer than the others, giving it a kind of stress.
Most Arabic women in our period were known either as their fathers' daughters (e.g. <'Ijliyah bint Khalid>) or their sons' mothers (e.g. <Umm Rashid 'Ijliyah>). As you noted, a slave would probably have been known only by her given name. Once freed, she might have adopted a byname based on where she lived, especially if she moved away. You could consider the bynames <al-Qurtabiyah> "the Cordovan woman" or <al-Andalusiyyah> "the Andalusian woman" [2]. These phrases are pronounced \al-qoor-t.a-BEE-yah\ and \al-an-da-loo-SEE-yah\. The \q\ in the first pronunciation is similar to a \k\, but pronounced at the very back of the mouth. The dot, \t.\, indicates that the \t\ is pronounced from the upper throat, as though you were swallowing it. As far as we can determine, by the way, the Arabs did not bring Circassian slaves to al-Andalus. They were common in the Levant and Egypt, but not in the Maghreb or al-Andalus.
The remainder of the life story you sent us is historically rather fanciful, so it is very difficult to suggest how to adapt your name to it. The only advice we can offer is that if your persona had ended up marrying an Irishman, she would certainly have converted to Christianity and adopted a Gaelic name.
I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Pedro de Alcazar, Sion Andreas, and Da'ud ibn Auda.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] Da'ud ibn Auda, "A List of Arabic Women's Names" (WWW: Academy of Saint
Gabriel, 1996).
http://www.us.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/docs/arabicwomen.html
[2] Elias A. Elias, _English-Arabic Dictionary Romanized_ (edition unknown). See also Juliana de Luna, "Andalusian Names: Arabs in Spain" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 2001), where the byname is given as <al-Qurtubiyya> http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/andalusia/
Correction, 24 Apr 2002, Arval: Expanded note [2] to provide a better reference for the byname.