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Coupled with the expansion of low-cost screen readers, digital format e-books have made worldwide reading equality an achievable dream. Nevertheless, copyright laws, industry practices, and lack of political will have resulted in a book famine that prevents persons with print disabilities across the globe from reading. The book famine is serious in the Global North, and even more critical in the Global South. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in combination with the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (Marrakesh Treaty), have transformed international law so that the print disabled have equal rights to access books and attendant enabling implementation schemes. But will the human right to reading quality manifest in practice, especially in the resource-challenged Global South? This chapter analyzes the new sharing model and reflects on its potential impact.

How can the next generation of digital products and servces best serve individuals with disabilities in the Global South? Local advocates, content, and tool developers can leverage global digital initiatives in education, employment, data, and standards to improve inclusion for people with disabilities in the connected digital age. To succeed, products and services must be inclusive, sustainable, and locally relevant. This chapter explores examples of programs that deeply engage people with disabilities in the Global South as developers, employees, and/or individual users; utilize open, global standards; increase collaboration to raise the voices of people with disabilities; and consider new challenges brought about by technology as it rapidly evolves.

This chapter looks at the internal dynamics of Jewish communities inside their neighborhoods. In the Jewish quarters, Jews were legally independent, as rabbis interpreted and controlled the internal religious and social relations before the arrival of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the introduction of secular education. The growing exposure of the Jews of Akka and other communities to modern social changes among the urban Jews of Essaouira and Marrakesh accelerated the weakening of the traditional structures in these rural Jewish quarters. In addition, with Moroccan independence and the establishment of Israel, new political institutions limited the power of the rabbis and introduced drastic cultural and social changes to these communities.

Building up on earlier investigations of muqarnas vaulting in the central and eastern and Islamic world, this article examines the singular early twelfth century Qubbat al-Barudiyyin in Marrakech, concluding that its blended forms and unusual inscriptions reflect its rootedness in Cordoba and its assimilation of Abbasid symbolic forms.

This chapter describes how Islamic architecture developed more sober and abstract tendencies during the religious reforms of 1100-1250 CE as two successive Berber dynasties, first the Almoravids, then the Almohads, consolidated power and united Islamic rule in the western Mediterranean. During the reign of the Almoravids the palaces at Bin Yūniš, Onda, and Murcia show a steady transition from the styles of the tā’ifa-period to the distinctive architeture of the Almohads. Meanwhile, the palace of Monteagudo, constructed at the collapse of the Almoravids during the “second tā’ifa-period” fully introduced the Abbasid concept of space to the Iberian Peninsula and culminated the merger of fortified castles and residential palaces. Reflecting their interest in the governed community, the Almohads constructed their qasabas adjoined to cities, as may be seen in Marrakesh and Seville. An affinity for geometric symmetry and order, likely arising from Abbasid spatial conceptions, dictated the Almohads’ unadorned architectual style.

This chapter surveys the limited evidence on Islamic palatial architecture in the Western Mediterranean during the Early Modern Period. Northern Africa was weakly incorporated into the Ottoman Empire as the Barbary States. In the capital cities– Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers – leaders took on the trappings of traditional Islamic rulers and preserved the earlier architectural styles and concepts of space in their palace designs. In Morocco a succession of Berber and Arab dynasties resisted the Ottomans and united the far-western Maghreb. These rulers underpinned their rule by religious ideology and built huge palatial cities featuring a diversity of architectural forms at the “royal cities” (Fes, Marrakesh, Rabat and Méknes) – though, for the most part, the chief typologies and spatial concepts were developed in previous centuries. Towards the end of the period, the growing influence of European colonialism brought an end to the tradition of Islamic architecture in both regions.

The signing of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement at Marrakesh in 1994 marked the beginning of a new international IP regime. As per Article 27 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), no member could discriminate among different technologies under their domestic patent law. India was, therefore, under an obligation to amend its domestic patent law to once again recognize pharmaceutical patents. After an initial failure to amend its domestic law, India was sued by the US and EU before the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the WTO. Under the threat of WTO-authorised trade sanctions, India began the process of amending its patent law over three phases. This chapter explains the stormy decade between the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement and the enactment of the Patent (Amendment) Act, 2005 which finally recognized pharmaceutical patents with the caveat of Section 3(d).