AHC: The same conquest happens, and is reversed, as many times as possible

What is the longest period of time that two powers or power-blocs could fight over the same area, sometimes successfully conquering it and other times losing it?

The closest OTL examples may be the Chinese wars on the Mongolian Plateau, the Roman-Persian Wars, the Reconquista, and the Adal Sultanate and other Muslim kingdoms' conquests in Ethiopia.

As a rough ATL, perhaps the Reconquista is reversed and extended by having the Marinids defeat the Christian alliance in 1340, restoring al-Andalus. Continuous wars occur in southern Iberia until the Reformation, when weakening and infighting among the Catholic powers allows al-Andalus to expand to almost full extent of the 8th century. Yet, the economic growth during the Northern Renaissance, leads to the English raiding al-Andalus similarly to OTL Portuguese colonialism across the world, weakening them until French-supported Spanish states again retake the peninsula. The Ottoman Empire then reaches its peak and sends an expeditionary force to aid the ailing al-Andalus to retake Iberia. This continues indefinitely.
 
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I think either preventing the successes of Toghrul Beg or simply weakening the Turkish invasions of the 11th century could result in an similar situation along the Byzantine Eastern Border. They did not have the logistic capacity to capture and hold large swathes of land beyond the Caucasus in the 11th century, but continuing to have weak neighbors and perhaps some more military minded leaders could lead to a situation like you propose.

I could see the coast of the Levant, inner Syria, and Armenia all becoming areas of competing influence with conquests and reverses constantly (assuming the Byzantine Empire does not suffer catastrophe during any of this time and collapse like after Manzikert.)
 
Perhaps a war over the Indus Valley and the Khyber passage and Baluch desert could work. This happened many times in otl;

The Seleucid-Maurya conflicts and these could be expanded greatly. A continued war between the so-called Magadhi imperial complex against a Greco-Mesopotamian empire, seeking to make its eastern border be the fertile Indus Valley.

In similar, a Greek state based in Bactria could engender this sort of struggle with a powerful Hindu state.

This occurred between the Arsacid empire and a varied assortment of Hindu-Scythian states in the Indus Valley. Arsacid powers attempted to gather the pieces from the fall of Bactria and defeat Scythian conqueror states in the Indus and created many vassal states and tributaries which warred over control of the Indus and khyber pass. The Indo-Parthians was the primary representatives or the Surenid noble clan of Baluchistan-Sistan.

The rise of the Kushan empire, saw the fall of Arsacid eastern vassals and the Kushan integrated the Indus Valley into its empire and absorbed much of Hindustan into its imperial complex. The Scyhto-Indian states especially were powerful feudatories of the Kushan, the Western Satraps being the most famous and other statelets such as Punjabi republics and city states which were direct feudatories of the Kushanshah. Though, the decline of Kushan authority coincided with the rise of the Sassanids. Once more the Indus became an area of overt competition, Sassanids especially supporting Perso-Indus states and Neo-Kushans against Scytho-Indian states such as the Westsern Satraps and rising Hindu states to the east.

Later, this situation repeated itself with the rise of the Hepthalite White Huns, who competed with the Gupta Empire (of the Magadhi complex) over the Indus Valley and the border exchanged near constantly between these two empires, before the Hunnic power faltered under the pressure of wars on 3 fronts (Sassanids [west-south], Celestial Turks [north] and Gupta [east]).

Finally, this continued deep into the Islamic age. Rajput and Punjabi states fought encroaching Islamic armies of Arab, Persian and Turkic origin across the Indus. Perhaps due to persistence and a greater cultural continuum than in previous periods, the ultramontane (in this case, beyond the Hindu Kush) power outside the Hindustan, overcame even the extent of power that the Kushan has achieved. That is, conquest of the Magadhi, Bengal and so forth. Thus, bringing to an end for a time this Indus Valley exchange wars. Only reviving somewhat once more for a final iteration in the Mughal-Persian wars and the Durrani-Marathi conflict.

In total, we could say this Hindu, or countries and powers within Hindustan, competition with ultramontane powers beyond the Hindu lands over the Indus and near regions, spanned 1500 years.
 
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