Padan Aram

פדן ארם

Padan = "a field" or "plain", as does Avel (אבל) and also Sadeh (שדה). 

Thus "the plains of Ashur (Syria)" = Mesopotamia.

Genesis 25:20; 28:2 ff; 46:15 and 48:7 all name it as the land where Av-Ram and Sarai's family settled after uprooting from Chaldea, and all remained there, specifically in the city of in Charan, when they journeyed on to Kena'an (Canaan). It was to Padan Aram that Av-Raham sent his servant Eli-Ezer to bring back a wife - Rivkah (Rebecca) - for Yitschak (Isaac); and to where Ya'akov (Jacob) fled from his brother Esav (Esau).

Aram himself is denoted (Genesis 22:21) as a grandson of Nachor, Av-Raham's brother, by his son Kemu-El (קמואל).

The Aramaean language became the lingua franca of the Beney Yisra-El after the exile in 586 BCE. Much of the books of Ezra, Iyov (Job) and Dani-El (Daniel) are written in Aramaic, as is the whole of the Talmud Yeru-Shalmi (Jerusalem Talmud) and some key sections of Jewish liturgy (e.g the Kaddish).

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