One of the most famous examples of civic engagement in the popular memory of Jeddah is the al-Falah school. It was founded by a member of the one of the leading merchant families, Muhammad Ali Zaynal, in 1905, who later established branches in Mecca, Bahrain, Dubai, and Bombay. Allegedly, the school was founded as a distinctive civic initiative to counter the Ottoman language instruction at the Ottoman middle school, or rüşdiyye, that had been established in 1876. Today, it is being remembered as a bold initiative which was initially forbidden by the Ottomans, continued clandestinely for a few years before being legalised. The school was soon supported financially by other leading merchants of the town and is said to have trained the leading personalities of Jeddah during the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, it exists to this day and, although by now financed by the state, is still supported by the founding family. Schools in the early 20th century were normally more than mere centres of instruction but provided an important locus of political socialisation. The memoirs of Zafir al-Qasimi show this convincingly for Maktab Anbar in late 19th and early 20th century Damascus (for the voluminous secondary literature developing this theme, c.f. the bibliography of Deguilhem-Schoem's article on the school in REMMM 52-53, 1989). In contrast, we know hardly anything about the cultural and educational life in late Ottoman, Hashemite and early Saudi Jeddah, in spite of the pioneering works of Ochsenwald (notably his 1991 article on Arabism in the Hijaz). The importance of the Falah school in the popular memory and local histories serves, however, as a first indicator of a role that went well beyond a mere educational establishment, although in which ways will need to be explored further in this paper. Documents pertaining to the school, local histories and memoirs, writings (mostly newspaper articles) about the founder and the school as well some Ottoman documents on the competing rüşdiyya will be used to investigate the role of the Falah-school as a site of civic engagement in Jeddah and explore its potential in the cultural formation of its youth from its founding days until the 1950s.