Teaching (about) the culture and history in/of the Middle East and beyond is part of many types of classes in different levels of education, including history, literature, philosophy and the Arabic language itself. But what constitutes the collective image of the Arab culture? Who are the memorable figures in the long history of this part of the world, and what are the associations we make with their legacies? What are the geographical boundaries of this culture in all its manifestations and including all its representatives? Digital approaches to Arabic literature can provide us with valuable insights to begin answering those questions. This study explores the potential of applying a digital humanities approach to the study of modern Arabic literature in order to construct new knowledge about Arab culture. With a corpus of 17 complete novels from 17 different Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa, this study annotates and analyses the texts for various cultural elements (e.g. named entities of people and places) in an attempt to approach the Arab culture through the lens of data.