Crossroads of the World makes me think of Samarkand, UNESCO lists it as the “Crossroad of Cultures” so that would be the Sogdian or Timurid empire?
Not only.
Samarkand is one of the oldest cities in central Asia, dating back to at least the 7th - 8th centuries BCE. Archeology indicates the city already had artificial canals supplying water and stone city walls by the 7th century BCE. It was not only one of the primary cities of the Sogdian civ, but also the Achaemenid Persian capital of their Sogdian Satrapy.
After Alexander conquered it, the Greeks called it Maracanda, and as Maracanda or Marakhanda it was an important city of the Greco-Bactrian, Seleucid, and Kushan states.
It was important again under the Sassanids, where it became a center of Manichaeism and a point from which that religion spread accross central Asia.
At various times, the city was part of the Kidarite, Hephtalite Hun, Turkic Khaganate states, finally captured by the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century CE. The Abbasids lost it again, to the Karakhanids, Seljugs and Khwarazmshahs in that order.
It was a Mongol conquest after 1220, but the following century Timur made it his capital.
Basically, everybody who tried to control central Asia between Persia and India held it at one time or the other. That means it was important as a trade center for the Sogdians, Persians, Bactrian Greeks, Kushans, various Hunnic and Turkic tribal federations, and the Timurids.
They could build a whole DLC around this one city, if they chose.