BOUGIE, or Bougiah, a fortified seaport town of Algeria, in the province of Constantine and arrondissement of Sétif, betweeen Cape Carbon and the Wady-Sahell. Among its more important buildings are the French church, the hospital, the barracks, the magazines, and the Abdel-Kader fort, now used as a prison. Trade is carried on in wax, grain, oranges, oil, and wine. A basin was constructed about 1870 in the anchorage below the town. The population in 1872 was 2820, of whom 1134 were natives. Bougie, Bugia, or Bugiah is a town of great antiquity. If it is correctly identified with the Saida of the Romans it probably owes its origin to the Carthaginians. Genseric, the king of the Vandals, surrounded it with walls and chose it as his capital for some time; and in the 10th century it became, under the Beni-Hammad, the greatest com mercial city of the North African coast. The Italian merchants of the 12th and 13th centuries had numerous buildings of their own in the city, such as warehouses» baths, and churches. It became a haunt of pirates in the 15th century, and in the beginning of the 16th it was captured by the Spaniards, from whom it was taken by the Turks in 1555. It was a place of little importance when it fell into French possession about 1833.