Kantora District is one of the four
districts of the
Upper River Division
Upper River was one of the five Divisions of the Gambia. Its capital was Basse Santa Su. It was subsequently reorganised as the Basse Local Government Area, without any change in the area covered.
Per 2013 census, the region had a population ...
of
the Gambia
The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...
. it is the easternmost district of the country
At one point Kantora was a province of the
Kabu Empire but it probably had different boundaries then. The name derives from the Mandinka phrase "kana-ntoro," meaning "do not trouble me," referring to the disputes that
Tiramakhan Traore
Tiramakhan Traore (variations : ''Tiramakhan Traoré'' or Tirimakhan Trawally) was a 13th-century general in the Mali Empire who served under Sundiata Keita. Traore expanded the power of Mali westward and set up the Kabu Empire. Oliver, Roland, "T ...
's expedition struggled with there. They founded the village of Songkunda, meaning "place of agreement," to commemorate the re-establishment of peace. The name of the area is first recorded from 1456.
[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.]
References
Upper River Division
Districts of the Gambia
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