Mascara

Mascara (măs`kərə, mäs`kärä), town (1998 pop. 80,797), NW Algeria. The town is also known as Mouaskar. It is an administrative center, a garrison town, and a marketplace, noted for its white wine and for its trade in cereals, leather goods, and tobacco. Mascara occupies the site of a Roman settlement. During the 18th cent. it served as capital of the Turkish province in W Algeria. It later became a headquarters of the Algerian emir Abd al-Kadir, from whom the French captured (and destroyed) it in 1835; they lost it briefly and then reoccupied it in 1841.

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Mascara 

a city in northwestern Algeria, in the province of Mostaganem. Population, 36,900 (1966). It is a highway junction and the commercial center of an agricultural region (grapes, wine, olive oil, early vegetables, grain). There is a food-processing industry and a clothing factory.