In November 1922, the Turkish Grand National Assembly formally abolished the Ottoman Empire. This decision ended an empire whose origins can be traced back to 1299. Despite having survived for more than six centuries, many European diplomats in the late nineteenth century often derisively referred to the Ottoman Empire as "the sick man of Europe," as they debated what to do about the "Eastern Question." While it is easy to dismiss the last fifty years of the Ottoman Empire as a period of chaos and instability before the Empire's collapse, this Eurocentric view obscures the important developments and transformations taking place across the Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the role of this period in contributing…show more content… The first step was to cultivate more diplomatic solutions to disputes with European powers over territory. Abdülhamid II willingly ceded control of territories around the edges of the Empire to the British, French, and Russians rather than going to war with them. Instead of relying on an earlier form of Osmanlilik (Ottomanism or Ottoman nationalism), Abdülhamid II cultivated a more neo-patriarchal and Islamic Osmanlilik. Although he could not rid himself of the older government officials known as the Sublime Porte, Abdülhamid II encouraged a new bureaucracy that was more personally loyal to him rather than to the state itself. Using this bureaucracy, Abdülhamid II was able to assert greater control over much of the empire. Government officials asserted control in regions that were previously governed in name only, such as the Transjordan where Ottoman officials developed the town of Salt as a key administrative center. Officials even conducted a full census of the state's subjects in