The term traction trebuchet was created mainly to distinguish this type of weapon from the onager, a torsion powered catapult which is often conflated in contemporary sources with the mangonel, which was used as a generic term for any medieval stone throwing artillery. Traction trebuchet and counterweight trebuchet are modern terms ( retronyms), not used by contemporary users of the weapons. Other terms such as machina maior/magna may have also referred to counterweight trebuchets. Codagnellus did not specify a specific type of engine with the term and even implied that they were "fairly light in subsequent references." Only in the late 1210s do variations of "trebuchet" in sources, described as increasingly powerful machines or utilizing different components, identify more closely with the counterweight trebuchet. However it is unclear if these referred to counterweight trebuchets. Trabucha is found a decade later with predariae at the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d'Adda in an account by Iohannes Codagnellus. The word trabuchellus appeared alongside manganum and prederia in a document in Vicenza on 6 April 1189. The earliest appearance of the term "trebuchet" dates to the late 12th century. In China it was called the huihui pao (Muslim trebuchet). In Arabic the counterweight trebuchet was called manjaniq maghribi or majaniq ifranji. Cathcart King suggests that it is derived from " trebucher, to rock or tilt." The numerous forms of the word that appeared during the 13th century, including trabocco, tribok, tribuclietta, and trubechetum, have made it impossible to identify the source with any certainty. It is uncertain what the origin of the word "trebuchet" is. The onager was a torsion powered weapon used in Europe from the fourth until the sixth century AD It appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the 12th century, and was carried back to China by the Mongols in the 13th century. The later, and often larger and more powerful, counterweight trebuchet, also known as the counterpoise trebuchet, uses a counterweight to swing the arm. Carried westward by the Avars, the technology was adopted by the Byzantines in the late 6th century AD and by their neighbors in the following centuries. It first appeared in China in the 4th century BC. The first is the traction trebuchet, or mangonel, which uses manpower to swing the arm. The design of a trebuchet allows it to launch projectiles of greater weights further distances than that of a traditional catapult. It was a common powerful siege engine until the advent of gunpowder. 1306-18 Ī trebuchet ( French: trébuchet) is a type of catapult that uses a long arm to throw a projectile. Counterweight trebuchet used in a siege from the Jami' al-tawarikh, c.