Aren Mador was the capital city of Essenia during the Trolloc Wars, so the only thing that I actually wondered about in this passage was how Rand would have known about it. LTT wouldn't have any memory of it since he'd have been dead for a thousand years at that point. The only way Rand himself would know of it is if he is way more of a history buff than we have seen so far. Then there's the whole thing about everything from the AoL being utterly annihilated, so I find it difficult to believe that an entire city could have survived intact.

I thought this passage was just a blunder by Brandon getting his WoT trivia wrong.