diff --git a/docs/requirements.txt b/docs/requirements.txt
index 9d3e4e1d8e6..e1e0a8fc7eb 100644
--- a/docs/requirements.txt
+++ b/docs/requirements.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
 python-markdown-math==0.2
 
 alabaster==0.7.8
@@ -12,3 +13,4 @@ six==1.10.0
 snowballstemmer==1.2.1
 Sphinx==1.4.4
 sphinx-rtd-theme==0.1.9
+recommonmark==0.4.0
diff --git a/docs/source/conf.py b/docs/source/conf.py
index a9ac538b3cc..4a367de066f 100644
--- a/docs/source/conf.py
+++ b/docs/source/conf.py
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 #
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
+#
 # hyperledger-fabricdocs documentation build configuration file, created by
 # sphinx-quickstart on Mon Feb 20 16:11:53 2017.
 #
@@ -43,11 +45,20 @@
 # Add any paths that contain templates here, relative to this directory.
 templates_path = ['_templates']
 
+# recommonmark is a python utility that allows markdown to be used within
+# Sphinx projects.
+# Installed version as per directive in docs/requirement.txt
+from recommonmark.parser import CommonMarkParser
+
+source_parsers = {
+    '.md': CommonMarkParser,
+}
+
 # The suffix(es) of source filenames.
 # You can specify multiple suffix as a list of string:
 #
 # source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']
-source_suffix = '.rst'
+source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']
 
 # The master toctree document.
 master_doc = 'index'