Khenchela is a city of the eastern Aurès massif in northeastern Algeria, set at 1,200 metres on the southern slope of the Aurès between Batna to the west and Tébessa to the east. The Roman-period Mascula preceded the medieval Berber town; the modern toponym Khenchela has only loose phonological relation to the antique form and may derive from a separate Berber root.
The city is one of the principal urban centres of the Chaoui sphere alongside Batna, Biskra, and Khenchela's own surrounding rural communes. The Tachawit-speaking population of the Khenchela region is concentrated in the high villages of the Aurès massif (the Aith Frah, Aith Daoud, Aith Abdi, and several other tribal sections) and in the city itself, where it forms a continuing minority alongside the broader Algerian-Arabic urban majority.
The Roman-period Mascula was the principal urban centre of the eastern Aurès in antiquity and produced extensive funerary and dedicatory inscriptions documenting the Berber-Roman synthesis of the period. The medieval and early modern history of the site is less documented; the town re-emerged under French colonial administration as the seat of the cercle of Khenchela.
The Aurès was the principal opening front of the 1954 Algerian War of Independence; the Khenchela region was a primary base of FLN Wilaya I operations across the war. The contemporary city is the regional administrative capital and the principal point of departure for the high Aurès villages that retain the strongest continuing Tachawit-language transmission.