This article seeks to analyse the Portuguese crusading efforts in North Africa, from the beginning of the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Our approach will be divided in two parts. In the first, we analyse the rhetoric and historiographical construction made by the Portuguese crown. This process, embodied in chronicles that recounted the kingdom’s history, sought to underline the vital importance of the war against Islam to Portugal’s identity, and emphasized therefore the necessity of being predisposed to maintain the war effort in Maghreb. In the second part, we try to analyse (mostly through indirect evidence) how the warrior aristocracy received this “official vision”. We will attempt to understand in which measure the values, the practices and motifs publicized by the crown were or not assimilated by the men of arms who formed these stronghold garrisons.