Smara (also romanized Semara, Arabic: السمارة, Hassaniyya: [(ə)s.smaːra] ⓘ; Spanish: Esmara) is a city in the Moroccan-controlled part of Western Sahara, with a population of 57,035 recorded in the 2014 Moroccan census.

In 1904 the shaykh declared himself an imam and called for holy war (jihad) against French colonialism, which was increasingly pressing into the Sahara at this time.

Reaching Ma el Ainain's mysterious Smara was the goal of the brothers Vieuchange, early 20th-century French writers and romantics.

Michel Vieuchange's painful journey through the rebel-held Sahrawi lands in 1930 disguised as a Berber tribeswoman, eventually reaching Smara on 1 November 1930, and the dysentery that led to his death on the return, is documented in his journals.

[3] Comprising seven notebooks and more than 200 photographs, the account was published posthumously in 1932 as Smara: The Forbidden City (1932) by his brother Jean and became a bestseller.