Ottoman historical scholarship produced several studies on patronage within the Ottoman ulama, emphasizing the close connections between high ranking ulama families, the relative monopoly certain families exercised on the mawali (the higher ranks of the ulama), and the relative openness of the lower ranks to outsiders. This presentation will focus on a selected group of Ottoman ulama, such as al-Lari (d. 1572) and al-Muhibbi (d. 1699), whose strong scholarly credentials failed to secure them patronage in the Ottoman ulama establishment. Al-Lari was a prolific Persian scholar who immigrated to Ottoman realms from India where he had tutored the Mughal Emperor. His treatises on various fields of learning, including the rational (aqli) sciences, the pursuit of which was not encouraged in the central Ottoman ulema establishment, left a considerable impact on the Ottoman reading public. When al-Lari sought patronage at the Ottoman court during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-66), he could not find what he sought. He settled in Amed (modern Diyarbakır) and ended his days there in a provincial madrasa within the Ottoman imperial system of education. Al-Muhibbi was an Arab scholar who left us the great biographical dictionary of the seventeenth century Islamic World, the Khulasat al-athar fî a'yan al-qarn al-hadî ‘ashar. His father had secured him the patronage of an Ottoman jurist, Izzeti Efendi, who did protect al-Muhibbi in Istanbul. But as soon as Izzeti retired, al-Muhibbi’s fortunes in Istanbul turned around and eventually he returned to Damascus. This presentation will focus on the cases of al-Lari and al-Muhibbi, as well as a few others who originated either from the margins of the empire, such as the Arab provinces, or from other parts of the Islamic World, such as India and North Africa. As will be demonstrated with detailed evidence, in most of these cases, like that of al-Muhibbi, ethnic connections and proximity to Ottoman ulama networks of patronage seem to have played a role, in a few others, like that of al-Lari, the ideological boundaries of the Ottoman central ulama establishment seem to have acted as gate keepers for aspiring scholars.