When the Abbasid dynasty overthrew the Umayyads in 750, they moved the centre of government in the caliphate into Mesopotamia, where from 762 they designed a new capital with no links to previous imperial histories. Baghdad replaced both Damascus and Seleucia-Ctesiphon as the key city of the Middle East. In the battle for prominence among the various factions of Christianity, that shift eastwards would inevitably favour the Dyophysite ‘Church of the East’ against the Melchites and Miaphysites, and the Abbasids gave an unprecedented official jurisdiction to the Dyophysite patriarch over all
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