Yes they were. IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics because the drive could be connected directly to the ISA bus, using an on-board controller, vs. having to use an MFM or RLL controller on the bus in between it and the disk.
I used MFM in the first PC I built from scavenged parts, it used an ISA MFM controller card. IDE came later, those had an integrated controller ("integrated drive electronics") so the PC didn't need to know how to do the low-level control for the drive. Luxury. And less jumpers to faff about with.