Brian
One avenue to consider is the archaeological evidence. This past March at the Timonium show one of our presentors was an archaeologist working in Israel. She shared pictures of one of their work sites which was a 13th century walled forte that was embodied by the Europeans. Many interesting items turned up but specifically in regards to what you were looking at were a large number of crossbow bolts of various sizes. There were also a large number of various size stone cannon ball. The evidence suggested the forte was definitely under attack as they found skeletons with sword and bolt injuries and they even found a horse skeleton with bolt still in the bone. Given the various size bolt, they must have had crossbow from handheld to a wheeled type to shoot massive bolts. Matter of fact, as I recall, they had several Crusader fortes under dig and were finding a lot of archaeological evidence to suggest the crossbow was in strong use in the 13th century. It doesn't help with what the bow itself looked like but it is strong evidence of their use.
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