  Tafazzul Husain Khan (1727?--1800?), who began his career in the court of
Awadh, spent the last two decades of his life as a trusted ally of the East
India Company. What set him apart from other court officials was not so much
his erudition, political acumen and negotiating prowess, as his favourite
pastime: delving into mathematics and astronomy. Contact with the Company
personnel, some of whom were conversant with oriental languages and/or
contemporary scientific advances, provided him with the opportunity to brush up
his mathematical knowledge, and induced him to embark upon -- and, according to
some, bring to fruition -- the task of translating a few important mathematical
treatises, among them Newton's \textit{Principia}. According to Campbell, the
author of an obituary notice (published in 1804), "he translated the Principia
from the original Latin, into Arabic". The evidence gathered by Campbell is
examined, and found insufficient to warrant this astounding and oft-repeated
claim. Of the three tracts authored by Tafazzul (all published posthumously in
abridged versions), none can be described as a translation of Newton's
\textit{Principia}. Until the emergence of some tangible evidence, any talk of
his translations of the \textit{Principia} and other western treatises can only
be characterised as rumour, a process in which recall is often accompanied by
distortion.
