Propagandistic history-writing is a modern nationalist invention

Evidence

A third purpose of the writing of history is to legitimize, justify, advertise, promote, persuade, and indoctrinate. In pre-modern times, this is surprisingly rare. Historians on the whole tell it like it was. Occasionally, when they don’t, they confess. There are some striking passages in Tabari, for example, where he confesses in so many words to suppressing some information as not being in the public interest. For the most part, however, such suppression is a modern practice that arrives only with nationalism and nationalist historiography. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1957

Categorization

• XREF: Directly qualifies the Said-adjacent assumption that Orientalist/chronicler historiography was always ideologically instrumentalized — the knowledge-production claim here is that instrumental falsification is recent.
• QUESTION: Is Lewis right that pre-modern Muslim historians were candid, or is this itself an apologetic framing that underestimates court patronage pressures? Worth checking against examples like Ibn Khaldun or Rawandi.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1957