<P> The earliest medieval cannon, the pot - de-fer, had bulbous, vase - like shape, and was used more for psychological effect than for causing physical damage . The later culverin was transitional between the handgun and the full cannon, and was used as an anti-personnel weapon . During the 15th century, cannon advanced significantly, so that bombards were effective siege engines . Towards the end of the period, the cannon gradually replaced siege engines--among other forms of aging weaponry--on the battlefield . </P> <P> The Middle English word Canon was derived from the Old Italian word cannone, meaning large tube, which came from Latin canna, meaning cane or reed . The Latinised word canon has been used for a gun since 1326 in Italy, and since 1418 in English . The word Bombardum, or "bombard", was earliest term used for "cannon", but from 1430 it came to refer only to the largest weapons . </P> <P> The first documented battlefield use of gunpowder artillery took place on 28 January 1132, when Song General Han Shizhong used huochong to capture a city in Fujian . The world's earliest known hand cannon is the Heilongjiang hand cannon dated 1288, which was found in Mongol - held Manchuria . The first known illustration of a cannon is dated to 1326 . In his 1341 poem, The Iron Cannon Affair, one of the first accounts of the use of gunpowder artillery in China, Xian Zhang wrote that a cannonball fired from an eruptor could "pierce the heart or belly when it strikes a man or horse, and can even transfix several persons at once ." </P> <P> The Arabs acquired knowledge of gunpowder some time after 1240, but before 1280, by which time had written, in Arabic, recipes for gunpowder, instructions for the purification of saltpeter, and descriptions of gunpowder incendiaries . </P>

When was gunpowder invented in the middle ages