Kantora District is one of the four districts of the Upper River Division of the Gambia. it is the easternmost district of the country
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Upper_River_districts.png/250px-Upper_River_districts.png)
The name derives from the Mandinka phrase "kana-ntoro," meaning "do not trouble me," referring to the disputes that Tiramakhan Traore's expedition struggled with there. They founded the village of Songkunda, meaning "place of agreement," to commemorate the re-establishment of peace.[1]
The name of the area appears in written records as early as the 1456 voyage of Diego Gomes.[2] At one point Kantora was a province of the Kabu Empire but it had different boundaries then.[3] In particular, Duarte Pacheco Pereira noted in 1506 that Sutuco on the north bank of the river was the main trading center of Kantora.[4] By the 1621 visit of Richard Jobson, however, the north bank was under the control of the King of Wuli.[5]
References
edit- ^ Djibril Tamsir Niane, "Histoire des Mandingues de l'Ouest: le royaume du Gabou", p 21
- ^ Bühnen, Stephan. “Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from Southern Senegambia and Germany.” History in Africa, vol. 19, 1992, pp. 45–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3171995. Accessed 27 Jul. 2022.
- ^ Clark, Andrew F. and Lucie Colvin Phillips. Historical Dictionary of Senegal, (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1994) p. 172
- ^ Pereira, Duarte Pacheco (1936). Kimble, George H.T. (ed.). Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis. Ashgate.
- ^ Jobons, Richard (1623). Eason, James (ed.). The Golden Trade: or, A discovery of the River Gambra, and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians. Retrieved 12 June 2023.