The existence of elements such as sovereignty, legality, bureaucracy, citizenship, taxation, nationalization, authority and legitimacy, the use of impersonal power, the specific territoriality, and the (monopoly) control over the means of violence are among the defining characteristics of modern states, which are also alternately visible in the political ideas of Ibn Khaldun. The present paper attempts to discuss the characteristics of the modern state system in the political thought of Ibn Khaldun while the authors will try to analyze these characteristics in detail through his writings. As a result, Ibn Khaldun’s ideas about each characteristic of the modern state have been explained in a way that some of which can be found to be consistent with the aforesaid characteristics, and on the other hand, his ideas have been also found to be sometimes far different from them.