“The allusions were to the advent of Islam, to the coming of Islam to Iran and the struggles between different factions in earlier Islam. They could allude to these in the sure knowledge that they would be understood....”
The “allusions” were to the “perceptions” of that history, as conveyed to largely uneducated Muslim masses by the sectarian adherents - Shia Muslim and Sunni Muslim - NOT a “knowledge”, in terms of historical and factual analysis of that history.
He excuses their “sense” of history as “knowledge” of history but the only “knowledge” from which that sense is derived is dates and places when their faction was offended by another faction and not an analysis of the non-subjective “facts” that led to the events or the events themselves. In fact most of the actual facts have been lost because the original chroniclers in Islam were either Shia or Sunni sectarian advocates.
The west rendered Greek, Roman and Celtic myths to the realm of legend, where they belong; taking from them what moral lessons, if any, they held while rendering the “history” in them as myth; but Islamic scholars keep teaching their myths about historical events as factual history; and from those myths Islamic masses derive their “sense” of history.
I believe Dr. Lewis readily factors in what you refer to. Just curious...do you feel he is being an apologist?