Mascara (Ar. Muʿaskar) is a town located in northwestern Algeria about 96 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Oran on the southern slope of the Beni Chougran range of the Atlas Mountains. According to oral tradition, the Jewish community of Mascara was founded by fugitives from Spain and Portugal in 1492, but the growth of the Jewish population probably dates from the eighteenth century, when the city was the capital of the Western beylik under Turkish rule until Spain retook Oran in 1792. Jacob Hayyim Ben Na'im, from Fez, became rabbi and dayyan in Mascara in 1760. In 1832 the Algeria…