Catapult / Counterweight Trebuchet

Timeline

1. 600–1080Byzantine and Islamic world · MesopotamiaTorsion catapults stored energy in twisted skeins or tension structures and could hurl stones and incendiaries; Byzantine and Abbasid engineers refined their mechanisms and ballistics in the 7th–11th centuries, making them standard long-range suppression weapons in Mediterranean sieges.
2. c. 1081–1090Europe · EuropeIn the 1080s, both the armies of Western European lords and city-state garrisons were equipped with various catapults for bombarding walls, towers, and buildings; supplies of timber, rope, and stone shot determined siege duration, and catapults together with siege towers and mining formed a threefold siege system.
3. c. 1090–1300Eurasia · EurasiaThe counterweight trebuchet was driven by a long lever arm and a massive counterweight block, exceeding torsion engines in range and projectile weight; large trebuchets appeared in sieges such as Acre in 1187, while China simultaneously developed stone-throwing engines, reflecting parallel evolution and exchange of Eurasian siege technology.