Mascara (i.e. “mother of soldiers”) was the capital of a Turkish beylik during the Spanish occupation of Oran from the 16th to the close of the 18th century; but for the most of that period it occupied a site about two miles distant from the present position. On the removal of the bey to Oran its importance rapidly declined; and it was an insignificant place when in 1832 Abd-el-Kader, who was born in the neighbourhood, chose it as the seat of his power. It was laid in ruins by the French under Marshal Clausel and the duke of Orleans in 1835, the amir retreating south. Being reoccupied by Abd-el-Kader in 1838, Mascara was again captured in 1841 by Marshal Bugeaud and General Lamoricière.
MASCARENE ISLANDS (occasionally Mascarenhas), the collective title of a group in the Indian Ocean cast of Madagascar, viz. Mauritius, Réunion and Rodriguez (q.v.). The collective title is derived from the Portuguese navigator Mascarenhas, by whom Réunion, at first called Mascarenhas, was discovered.
MASCARON, JULES (1634-1703), French preacher, was the son of a barrister at Aix. Born at Marseilles in 1634, he early entered the French Oratory, and obtained great reputation as a preacher. Paris confirmed the judgment of the provinces; in 1666 he was asked to preach before the court, and became a great favourite with Louis XIV., who said that his eloquence was one of the few things that never grew old. In 1671 he was appointed bishop of Tulle; eight years later he was transferred to the larger diocese of Agen. He still continued, however, to preach regularly at court, being especially in request for funeral orations. A panegyric on Turenne, delivered in 1675, is considered his masterpiece. His style is strongly tinged with préciosité; and his chief surviving interest is as a glaring example of the evils from which Bossuet delivered the French pulpit. During his later years he devoted himself entirely to his pastoral duties at Agen, where he died in 1703.
Six of his most famous sermons were edited, with a biographical sketch of their author, by the Oratorian Borde in 1704.
MASCHERONI, LORENZO (1750-1800), Italian geometer, was professor of mathematics at the university of Pavia, and published a variety of mathematical works, the best known of which is his Geometria del compasso (Pavia, 1797), a collection of geometrical constructions in which the use of the circle alone is postulated. Many of the solutions are most ingenious, and some of the constructions of considerable practical importance.
There is a French translation by A. M. Carette (Paris, 1798), who also wrote a biography of Mascheroni. See Poggendorff, Biog. Lit. Handwörterbuch.