Neither do they yet provide the necessary information for reconstructing the text from the time immediately after Muhammad's death until the first official edition of the Qur’ān traditionally ordered by the Caliph ‘Uthmān".

Efim Rezvan of the Saint Petersburg State University says that the work is "capital" and brings "new insights to the history of the development of a standardized text of the Qur’ān.

"[11] Marcin Grodzki of the University of Warsaw writes that—despite some "minor flaws"—Small should be congratulated for his work, and that it should be given a "prominent place" in libraries involved with the history of early Islam and the study of the Quran.

[14] What we have in the Qur’ān as transmitted is ‘a text-form that was chosen from amidst a group of others, which was then edited and canonized at the expense of these others, and has been improved upon in order to make it conform to a desired ideal’.

It is richly documented, informed by other recent scholarship (both traditional Muslim and ‘Western’), eirenic and respectful in tone, and a solid and impressive case for the observations advanced.