Career
He headed the Egyptian Islamist organization from 1972 until 1986. Al-Tilmisani was born in the Darb al-Ahmar district of Cairo in 1904. A lawyer, al-Tilmisani joined the Brothers in 1933, and was inducted into the organization by its founding General Guide, Hassan al-Banna.
Al-Tilmisani was from a family of prominent landowners, which owned 300 feddans (acres) and seven houses. His deputy, and a later successor as General Guide, Mustafa Mashhur, was also from a family of wealthy landowners. Despite heading the group during this period of cooperation with the state, al-Tilmisani was imprisoned three times, once in 1954, as an activist during the difficult Nasser years, and twice while at the head of the group, during Sadat's mass roundup of opponents in 1981, and again under Hosni Mubarak in 1984.