The oasis caravan city in the Syrian desert that grew rich brokering trade between the Roman Mediterranean and Persia, India, and China, briefly broke away under Queen Zenobia, and survived as a magnificent ruin until parts of it were deliberately destroyed in 2015.
A city in the middle of a desert grew rich on goods it never produced. Palmyra made nothing the rest of the world wanted, yet it taxed nearly everything moving between Rome and the East, and for a few decades a queen named Zenobia used that wealth to challenge Rome itself. What does a place become when its fortune depends entirely on what passes through it?